Five Came Back

After the war, the directors return to their lives in Hollywood, forever changed by what they have seen.

Mouse over thumbnail for slideshow

Or scroll and see one by one:

#2 #3

and drank himself into a three-day stupor.

#4

[narrator] Stevens and his men traveled with the Army

#5 #6

until the final day of total victory.

#7 #8

Wyler and Hemingway left without telling anybody.

#9 #10

because he had not been on anything but a B-25

#11

but he believed that his directing career was over.

#12

Stevens and his men pressed on, filming the devastation and the aftermath.

#13

and Stevens was at Dachau.

#14

that I couldn't believe was part of human existence,

#15 #16

[Kasdan] Stevens stayed in Germany for quite a while,

#17

have been so calculated...

#18 #19 #20

[narrator] Know Your Enemy - Japan had been delayed for years

#21

an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima

#22

[General MacArthur] I now invite the representatives

#23

[Coppola] Huston was given the assignment to cover a military hospital,

#24

and that the cameras would continue to follow them through their treatment.

#25

of Huston's bigness of soul.

#26

Well, ultimately, economically, if they can rehabilitate those soldiers,

#27 #28

It would be a story not of victory, but of sacrifice.

#29

so much so that Ford said to him, "We won't shoot," you know,

#30

Ford, I think somewhat tardily, realized what he'd done,

#31

What it is to be American is to contemplate that light

#32 #33

sawdust all over the floor, the smell of plaster and wood,

#34

They don't want that force above them telling them what they can make

#35

Because it epitomizes everything I tried to say in all the other films

#36

create their testament movie at an earlier point in their career,

#37

right after the war, I made a film called The Best Years of Our Lives.

#38 #39

for his two lead actresses Myrna Loy and Teresa Wright.

#40 #41

and spent the next 20 years

#42

we all have egos, and I have a very big one.

#43

who's the best character in the whole piece.

#44

I came back and I tried to make a comedy, and I couldn't do it.

#45 #46

they speak to the lives that all of our parents and grandparents lived.

#47

It served as a social club and rehabilitation center for his men.

#48

-George, darling! -Mary!

#49 #50