"How the First World War Changed Movies Forever"

[Dave Monroe]

... sorry if someone's already posted this, but today's digest hasn't
come down the line yet, so ... nice article in the "Arts and Leisure"
section of yesterday's New York Times on "How the First World War
Changed Movies Forever."  In a nutshell:

... the Great War was the first to be fought before the motion picture
camera. In the field, reconnaisance became airborne and cinematic; at
home, propaganda leapt from the page to the screen. The effects were so
far-reaching, argues Paul Virilio in his often-cited book "War and
Cinema," that the war zone itself may be thought of as a kind of film.
On the front, perceptions became accelerated, discontinuous, mechanized,
as if the soldiers' eyes had turned into cameras. From this condition,
there was to be no release; after 1918, cinema's shock techniques
continued wartime perception by other means.

Stuart Klawans, "How the First World War Changed Movies Forever."
    New York Times, Sunday, November 19th, 2000.

Online @ http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/19/arts/19KLAW.html.

See as well the deservedly "oft-cited"

Virilio, Paul.  War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception.
    Trans. Patrick Camilier.  London and New York: Verso, 1989.

Nice online interview transcript on "Future War" and said 'logistics of
perception" @

http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Watson_Institute/programs/gs/VirtualY2K/futurewar.html

Quite enjoyed that "Hillbilly and Jazz" article as well, Don.  Passed it
on to a friend of mine with his very own "hillbilly" band, who esp.
enjoyed Louis Armstrong's comment about bebop: "weird chords which don't
mean nothin' and no melody to remember and no beat to dance to" ...