Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
The photos and snippets of dialog and celebrity quotes in this tie-in book to Steven Spielberg's D-day film Saving Private Ryan are a continuation of the movie by other means. (Be forewarned that the book reveals one major plot point concerning Matt Damon's Private Ryan character.) If the color pictures look a bit washed-out compared to, say, Disney's The Art of Mulan, that's the idea--Spielberg renounced his razzle-dazzle visual magic in order to convey a brute reality honestly. "I didn't want to shoot the picture as a Hollywood gung ho Rambo kind of extravaganza," Spielberg says in the book. "Janusz [Kaminski, the cinematographer] stripped all the glossy filters and the filaments from the lenses so they were just like the kind of lenses they actually used in the Second World War. We shot a lot of the war sequences with the shutter speed used by those Bell and Howell cameras of the 1940s for making newsreels.... If we've done our jobs, [the audience] will think we were actually on the beach on D-day." Time magazine opined that the film boasts "quite possibly the greatest combat sequence ever made."
The photos in this book give an inkling of that impact, and also evince the intense empathy for the GIs that won Spielberg the allegiance of the leading historian Stephen E. Ambrose, whose stunning book Citizen Soldiers was the director's prime influence. "I wanted to write about the lives of the GIs," Ambrose said in an Amazon.com interview. "Books are always written from the generals' point of view, but I'm sick of the generals and their point of view. It's more refreshing to be with the guys who did the fighting." After seeing the film or reading this book (or the novelization Saving Private Ryan), you may not feel refreshed, but you will be enlightened. And you will immediately want to read two other sagas of ordinary heroism by Ambrose, D-day and Undaunted Courage, his ode to Meriwether Lewis.
Saving Private Ryan is, in a sense, a companion volume to Tim O'Brien's masterpiece Going After Cacciato, about soldiers hunting down a deserter during the Vietnam War. Spielberg's story of GIs risking their lives hunting down an endangered dogface to save his life helps measure what it was that Americans lost between World War II and Vietnam. --Tim Appelo
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Photo Insider
James' book, an extension of the message of the film, is a valuable artifact of cinematic history. Inspired by those who sacrificed their lives for liberty, the memory of the images is not soon forgotten.
Saving Private Ryan
Saving Private Ryan,Steven Spielberg,Linda Sunshine,David James,Steven Speilberg,Newmarket Press,1557043701,Cinematography & Videography,Film & Video - Cinematography,Film & Video - Direction & Production,Film & Video - General,Film & Video - History & Criticism,Movie/Tv Tie-Ins,Performing Arts,Pop Arts / Pop Culture,Saving Private Ryan (Motion pi,Saving Private Ryan (Motion picture),War Films
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