I profile the origins and making of Saving Private Ryan for the film’s showing on TCM this month.

Tom Hanks, Matt Damon and Edward Burns

After years of revisiting the national shame of Vietnam in the war films of the seventies and eighties, Steven Spielberg steered Hollywood back to the pride and accomplishment of “the greatest generation” with Saving Private Ryan (1998). It was the first major World War II film in decades and the timing was right. The 50th Anniversary of D-Day in 1994 brought the cultural conversation back to the sacrifice of American soldiers. The World War II histories by Stephen Ambrose (notably Band of Brothers and D-Day) were major non-fiction best-sellers. In addition, Tom Brokaw’s book The Greatest Generation was released in 1998, the same year as Saving Private Ryan, signaling that America was once again ready to eulogize the good war.

“I’ve had an obsession with World War II,” confessed Spielberg in an interview conducted during the production of the film. His father fought in the Burma campaign in World War II as a radio man in a fighter plane. As a young teen, Spielberg and his friends created World War II adventures on super 8 film. He’d previously touched on the war in such films as 1941 (a homefront comedy, 1979), Empire of the Sun (a child’s-eye view of survival in an internment camp, 1987) and his acclaimed Holocaust drama Schindler’s List [1993], but Saving Private Ryan was his first classical war film, a platoon drama about the experience of American soldiers in combat.

Read the complete feature here. Plays on Turner Classic Movies in Friday, June 5.

[Originally published as part of the “MSN Cadillac” series.]

Saving Private Ryan has the budget and the production values, but if you want a World War II story from a real vet’s perspective, Sam Fuller is still the man and The Big Red One, drawn from his own war experiences, is the film.

Robert Carradine (standing in for the cigar-chomping, pulp-fiction-writing Fuller), Mark Hamill, Bobby Di Cicco and Kelly Ward are the green recruits who become hardened survivors under the gruff tutelage of Lee Marvin’s tough, taciturn Sergeant. We never learn his name — this World War I retread is simply Sarge, and Sarge teaches these raw recruits that in war you don’t murder, you kill. The only glory in war is surviving, in Fuller’s clear-eyed portrait of combat, and this quartet of survivors becomes Sarge’s “Four Horsemen,” the eternal figures in a rifle squad filled out by a couple hundred replacements whose names they finally give up trying to learn.

Lee Marvin is Sarge

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A few years ago I wrote a celebration of Steven Spielberg for MSN. This year, Spielberg is the recipient of the Golden Globes’s Cecil B. DeMille Award and the piece has been revived to celebrate his accomplishment. Here are a few choice “Moments of Spielberg” from the feature.

"Close Encounters of the Third Kind"

“Jaws” (1975)

The Moment: Robert Shaw mesmerizes fellow shark hunters Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss — and the audience — with his chilling story of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis during WWII.

Why it’s great: As the tension mounts and every shot of the ocean reminds us that a primal killer awaits under the gentle surface, Spielberg gives the audience a reprieve and then takes it away with something as simple as a campfire tale from a grizzled Captain Ahab.

Why it has lasted: Without a single special effect, Spielberg holds the audience rapt with the horror of the bloodiest shark attack ever recorded, and then punctuates the scene with an ominous, almost taunting thump against the boat. The shark has come for the trio.

“Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977)

The Moment: A darkened family home is invaded by intense blasts of light: the aliens have come for the boy.

Why it’s great: The child (Cary Guffrey) giggles in delight, running to the light with a naïve, innocent trust, while his mother (Melinda Dillon) sees only a threat in the searing violation of her house.

Why it has lasted: While ”Close Encounters of the Third Kind“ is ultimately a benevolent vision of hope, the scene is a troubling mix of innocent wonder and the adult horror of a parent’s worst nightmare come to life with an almost supernatural force. Spielberg plays on the mystery of the unseen invaders with a brilliant ambiguity. We have to wait for the climax to bridge the communication gap and discover their real intentions.

I go on to spotlight iconic and defining scenes, some lasting a few seconds, some going on for minutes, in the films Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Empire of the Sun, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence and Minority Report.

Read the entire piece here.