The films included here tell personal, sometimes intimate, stories set against the larger backgrounds of noted times in our nation’s history and growth, dramatizing the following: the chaos surrounding young men trying to steer clear of the distant CivilWar; post-Civil War America finding its way, exemplified by the fortitude of a typical small town; post-WWI disillusionment from a war hero; a Depression-era tale of the Deep South; and more disillusionment, this time post-WWII, from a visionary inventor. Be they problem pictures or message pictures or prestige pictures, each constructs a very specific America, without which their stories could not live onscreen as fully realized as they so painstakingly are.

excerpted from John DiLeo’s
Screen Savers: 40 Remarkable Movies Awaiting Rediscovery
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