"The War" Re-Examines WWII
The new documentary series, "The War," from award winning producer and director Ken Burns debuted on PBS last night and is re-examining one of the most hallowed eras of American history.
World War II changed America and the people who lived through it. He said that he and his co-producer/co-director Lynn Novak went spent years going through archives to find pictures and images most people had never seen before.
"Usually you have the documentary and greatest hits on top of the table," he told The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith. "We went in and found outtakes not seen since it was shot, and some in color. It's also how you use it, too. You don't want it to be just what we call in our business B-role. We're just illustrating, you want some sort of emotional archeology you're after. I think the testimony of veterans we got were great."
Burns said he wanted to make a series that focused on the real people who were there. There are no historians or generals, just the average Americans who participated.
"The problem with the second World War, for years we mediated it, made it the good war and bloodless war and mediated it by having celebrity generals and strategy and tactics everything and weapons," Burns said. "We want to find out what happened. These people are dying at a rate of 1,000 a day. If we don't record what they experienced, what war is like, which is just as horrible as it is now, more."
What's amazing about Burn's documentary is that he is able to get notoriously humble and reticent veterans to talk about what they saw.
"Think about it, you're 18, 19 years old, you go to war. The thing about war is you're scared, you're bored, you're hot, you're cold, you see bad things, you do bad things, you lose good friends. How can you come back and explain it?" he said. "The guys who saw the worst stuff were quiet and helped deal with it by making funny stories. We had a guy in the Battle of the Bulge, we took over a French farmhouse, 'They had a wine cellar, we all got drunk.' "
Later, the man's son said he had never heard that story before, Burns said.
Burns focuses on geographical areas: Mobile, Ala.; Luverne, Minn.; Sacramento, Calif.; and Waterbury, Conn. They went to each place and asked to see the archives and found the characters. When they initially began working on this film, they interviewed 650 people.
"Isn't it better to know what somebody said on the beach and what his momma said, if you can triangulate from an emotional way, isn't that better than from the top down? Then General Eisenhower decided to do this. All that has been done to death. What happens if these guys leave without having heard them out? My dad died in 2001. There hasn't been a day since then I haven't regretted asking him more questions about what he did in the Army in France. This is the stuff. We initiated, in addition to films, oral history projects at the Library of Congress that allow everybody to download sample questions from us and go get great grandma and grandma and do this and we'll have it forever. This isn't a film we couldn't have done 10 years ago, they were talking and in five years."
"The War" began on Sunday, Sept. 23, and will air on PBS as a 15-hour, seven-episode series. On Oct. 2, Paramount Home Entertainment will release the film on DVD. There is also a companion book on sale now.