Print the Legend Clint Eastwood's WWII drama strips away the myths surrounding the Greatest Generat

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(Free-Press-Release.com) October 18, 2006 -- A single photograph, we're told early on in Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers, can win or lose a war. But sometimes that photo shows us only part of the story, whether it's the part we don't want to see laughtered villagers at My Lai, tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraibr the part we do, with heroes front and center and the carnage out of view.

In Flags, the image under scrutiny is one of the most iconic in American photojournalism: five U.S. Marines and one Navy corpsman planting Old Glory atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima during the fifth day of the 35-day battle. That picture, Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, helped rally American support for the war, won a Pulitzer for its photographer (Joe Rosenthal), and made overnight celebrities out of its subjects. But the soldiers didn't feel like heroes, and with good reason.

Based on the bestselling book by James Bradley, whose father, John "Doc" Bradley, was the Navy corpsman in Rosenthal's photo, Flags of Our Fathers is about the three flag raisers who survived Iwo Jima radley (Ryan Phillippe), the dashing and mildly pompous Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford), and the proud Pima Indian Ira Hayes (Adam Beach) and how their moment in the spotlight irrevocably altered their lives. For these men were not the first to fly the Stars and Stripes, but rather a secondary team, assembled after the smaller flag erected earlier by a different group was claimed as a souvenir by a naval officer. It was this second flag, though, that was seen around the world, its raisers plucked from duty and ferried hither and yon by wily politicians who saw the makings of an inspired PR campaign. It was not the first or last time that perception trumped reality in the selling of wars to the American public.

Source: http://www.yahoo.com
Posted by Scott Foundas

american photojournalism     clint eastwood     joe rosenthal     overnight celebrities