Bob Landry’s landing film was not lost, nor is it missing. It’s right before our eyes. We don’t recognize it as such because we expect his first film to show scenes from D-Day. But there is no Landry film from D-Day, for the simple reason that, apparently, he did not land on D-Day. Certainly there is no evidence that he did. […]
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Film that did make it off the beach and back to London had to face two additional obstacles. First, would the censors pass it? The second obstacle was perhaps the most daunting: would anyone care about the images? […] It is clear that the legend of a duffel bag full of D-Day still and motion-picture film “dropped overboard” is a fable. There is absolutely no evidence to substantiate it, and much to disprove it. […] This “lost film” tale centers on Utah Beach. In brief, the D-Day film from that beach was supposedly entrusted to a courier who then accidentally dropped it into the ocean while climbing aboard a ship. This seems to be merely a miasma of self-reinforcing rumors with no factual basis. […] I would propose that what Langston Hughes achieved in The Sweet Flypaper of Life, though radically different in kind, constitutes an editorial accomplishment that bears comparison with what Robert Frank did with his own pictures in The Americans, published in 1958-59. To use a distinction from general systems theory, Hughes took a heap and made of it a whole. […] |
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