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Archives of War, Vols. 1-3 |
List Price: $69.98
Your Price: $62.98 |
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Reviews |
Features:
- Black & White
- Color
- Box set
Description:
This six-tape boxed set focusing on wars of the 20th century takes an unusual approach by utilizing seldom seen films and newsreel clips while eschewing the conventions of historical documentaries. There are no historians interviewed on camera providing perspective, and what background information is offered appears in occasional screens of scrolling text. For the most part, vintage black and white newsreels shot by Britain's Pathe News serve as the mainstay of the presentations, though the first video, which focuses mainly on World War I, actually uses a fairly lengthy theatrical silent film produced in the 1920s to illustrate the horrors of warfare in the trenches. Two videos showcase newsreel footage of World War II, and one tape each is expended on the Cold War, the conflict in Korea, and Vietnam. The content varies considerably, as some footage was shot under combat conditions and is intrinsically dramatic, while other film clips may have been interesting to audiences of the day, but their immediacy has sharply faded with the passing of decades. There are some obvious drawbacks to this approach of packaging newsreels (and even some U.S. government propaganda and Civil Defense films), and while this collection doesn't stand up very well as a comprehensive history of the century's wars, it does have its moments and shows how warfare was covered by the newsreel cameramen and presented to a curious world. --Robert J. McNamara
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