- 416 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About This Book
"A marvelous bombshell of a book, by one of our most formidably knowledgeable and insightful writers on film, it is filled with surprises and witty asides.Though Thomson is quick to pounce on the hypocrisies and historical omissions of some of these war movies, there is nothing compromised about his own daredevil judgments.We are in the hands of a master critic/essayist."âPhillip Lopate
From one of the greatest living writers on film, a magisterial look at a century of battle depicted on screen, and a meditation on the twisted relationship between war and the movies.
In The Fatal Alliance the acclaimed film critic David Thomson offers us one of his most provocative books yetâa rich, arresting, and troubling study of that most beloved genre: the war movie. It is not a standard history or survey of war films, although Thomson turns his typically piercing eye to many favoritesâfrom All Quiet on the Western Front to The Bridge on the River Kwai to Saving Private Ryan.But The Fatal Alliance does much more, exploringhow war and cinema in the twentiethcentury became inextricably linked. Movies had only begun to exist by the beginning of World War I, yet in less than a century, had transformed civilian experience of warâand history itselfâfor millions around the globe. This reality is the moral conundrum at the heart of Thomson's book. War movies bring both prestige and are so often box office blockbusters; but is there something problematic at how much moviegoers enjoy depictions of violence on a grand scale, such as Apocalypse Now, Black Hawk Down, or even Star Wars? And what does this truth say about us, our culture, and our changing sense of warfare and the past?
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- I. Mobilization
- II. Hostilities
- III. The Just War
- IV. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
- Acknowledgments
- Notes on Sources
- Index
- About the Author
- Also by David Thomson
- Copyright
- About the Publisher