Author Mark Harris on the Movies to Watch After Netflix’s ‘Five Came Back’
Netflix’s new documentary series Five Came Back, based on historian and critic Mark Harris’ book about five Hollywood directors — Frank Capra, John Ford, John Huston, George Stevens, and William Wyler — and their journeys through World War II, does something the book couldn’t: Show you these directors’ work, both in commercial movies before and after the war, and in training and propaganda films during it. Harris told me sharing those films with viewers, and potentially making new fans of this classical Hollywood quintet, was one major reason he wanted to turn Five Came Back into a film.