The Fatal Alliance

A Century of War on Film

David Thomson

$70

Hardback

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English

Harper
09 March 2024

Film, TV & Radio; Film theory & criticism

“A marvelous bombshell of a book, by one of our most formidably knowledgeable and insightful writers on film, it is filled with surprises and witty asides. Though Thomson is quick to pounce on the hypocrisies and historical omissions of some of these war movies, there is nothing compromised about his own daredevil judgments. We are in the hands of a master critic/essayist.”—Phillip Lopate

From one of the greatest living writers on film, a magisterial look at a century of battle depicted on screen, and a meditation on the twisted relationship between war and the movies.

In The Fatal Alliance the acclaimed film critic David Thomson offers us one of his most provocative books yet—a rich, arresting, and troubling study of that most beloved genre: the war movie. It is not a standard history or survey of war films, although Thomson turns his typically piercing eye to many favorites—from All Quiet on the Western Front to The Bridge on the River Kwai to Saving Private Ryan. But The Fatal Alliance does much more, exploring how war and cinema in the twentieth century became inextricably linked. Movies had only begun to exist by the beginning of World War I, yet in less than a century, had transformed civilian experience of war—and history itself—for millions around the globe. This reality is the moral conundrum at the heart of Thomson’s book. War movies bring both prestige and are so often box office blockbusters; but is there something problematic at how much moviegoers enjoy depictions of violence on a grand scale, such as Apocalypse Now, Black Hawk Down, or even Star Wars And what does this truth say about us, our culture, and our changing sense of warfare and the past

By: David Thomson
Imprint: Harper
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 32mm
Weight: 646g
ISBN: 9780063041417
ISBN 10: 0063041413
Pages: 448
Publication Date: 09 March 2024
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

David Thomson is the author of more than twenty-five books, including The Biographical Dictionary of Film, biographies of Orson Welles and David O. Selznick, and the pioneering novel Suspects, which featured characters from film. He lives in San Francisco, California.

Reviews for The Fatal Alliance: A Century of War on Film

"""A marvelous bombshell of a book, by one of our most formidably knowledgeable and insightful writers on film, it is filled with surprises and witty asides. Though Thomson is quick to pounce on the hypocrisies and historical omissions of some of these war movies, there is nothing compromised about his own daredevil judgments. We are in the hands of a master critic/essayist."" — Phillip Lopate “Praise the gods for giving us a writer with a deep moral sense and an epigrammatic prose style who writes as exquisitely about war as he does about film. Thomson's book brims with striking observations and provocative readings of crucial films, the great and the forgotten, from All Quiet on the Western Front to Apocalypse Now to Black Hawk Down and scores more. The Fatal Alliance is an absorbing, uproarious and essential book -- about war, about film, about us. And my God, the man can write!"" — Mark Danner, author of Stripping Bare the Body: Politics Violence War and Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War"