Shooting War: World War II Combat Cameramen (2000)

Documentary. Here is a good chronological and contextual overview of World War II documentary motion pictures, including some scenes never before released, with extensive commentary from the cameramen themselves. (Tom Hanks narrates and appears initially in a huge bushy beard -- he must have been in production for Cast Away.) Wars had been photographed before but WWII was the first war that was intentionally and massively covered by embedded cinematographers like John Huston and John M. Ford in addition to more than 1,500 soldiers trained as cameramen. Their job was to document every beach landing, carrier operation, urban tank match, and so on. (Cartoons and war films formed the original cinematic trailers and Saturday moviegoing was the best way for civilians back home to get their news of the war. The documentary footage was incorporated into the embedded producers' own coverage, which became war propaganda as it increasingly involved battle reenactments, ship and plane models, actors, and scripting.) The raw war footage was necessary for the conduct of war by generals and for the comprehension of war by civilians. As such, these cameramen on the ground and in the air showed their mettle and often risked their lives to help America "get the big picture" of the war, with a measure of the personal courage, professional dedication, and service to humanity that we have seen in war correspondents ever since. 3.5 stars.