I had the privilege of meeting Danny Huston on a film that I worked on in Atlanta, Georgia. I was curious if he’d talked to his father about his war films, and what he thought about Five Came Back. He said that yes, his father had talked about those years, and said that he felt that all his films, even though they were produced for the war department, ought to function as anti-war films. Famously, Huston had said that he’d be ashamed of himself if he ever made a pro-war film. However, his desire to portray the realities of war in a more visceral manner put him in conflict with his superiors (one of which was Capra). While he wanted to be more honest in one sense, he ended up, like Robert Flaherty, needing to stage events to accomplish this.
– from the upcoming book “How to Film the Truth: The Story of Documentary Film As a Spiritual Journey” to be released in the Summer of 2018 by Wipf & Stock