First World War
Screening Room
Serenity Amid Disaster in “The Flying Sailor”
In an animated short inspired by historical events, Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby imagine what happens to a middle-aged man who goes from minding his own business to being blasted through the heavens.
Cultural Comment
A Newly Discovered Céline Novel Creates a Stir
You can’t separate what’s powerful about his writing from his vile anti-Semitism.
The Front Row
“Benediction,” Reviewed: The Bio-Pic as Radical Melodrama
Terence Davies’s film embodies the artistic power and passion of the British poet Siegfried Sassoon.
Books
The Strange Case of Ivor Gurney
Composer, poet of the First World War, incurable psychiatric patient: Are we at last ready to understand this elusive figure’s interrupted idylls?
Books
Philosophy in the Shadow of Nazism
After the First World War, the members of the Vienna Circle tried to put European thought on a rigorously logical footing. Then the times caught up with them.
The Front Row
What to Stream: “The 24th,” a Passionate Historical Drama of Military Honor Amid Jim Crow
Kevin Willmott’s new feature takes its place in his long-range project of exploring Black history cinematically.
Cultural Comment
Willa Cather’s Quietly Shattering War Novel
In “One of Ours,” the author merged pandemic and war into a general season of death.
Daily Comment
Woodrow Wilson’s Case of the Flu, and How Pandemics Change History
The two worst pandemics to strike the United States in the past hundred years have coincided with the terms of two Presidents—Wilson and Trump—who were so plainly unprepared for their responsibilities.
The Front Row
The Beauty of Sam Mendes’s “1917” Comes at a Cost
The script of the film is filled with melodramatic coincidences that grossly trivialize the life-and-death action by reducing it to sentiment.
Double Take
Sunday Reading: Veterans’ Stories
From The New Yorker’s archive: in honor of Veterans Day, poignant and moving stories of service members’ experiences.
Onward and Upward in the Garden
The Stunning Grounds, and Tragic History, of the Lost Gardens of Heligan
After nine Heligan men died in the First World War, the grounds of the estate, in southwestern England, grew unkempt, then neglected, then were abandoned.
Daily Comment
A Few Thoughts on the Authenticity of Peter Jackson’s “They Shall Not Grow Old”
Jackson’s process of modernizing footage from the First World War does make it effectively contemporary, but, by altering the mirror of the past, we fail to see the subjects staring into it quite accurately.
Culture Desk
“The Head and the Load,” William Kentridge’s Homage to Africa in the Great War
In the fever-dream theatre piece, the shadows loom larger than the actors themselves, the darkness of history made visible.
Letter from the U.K.
The First World War Remains Remarkably Alive in British Memory
A new, breathtaking documentary by Peter Jackson, which was shown on the BBC on Sunday, should be required viewing for all those who want to better understand war and its costs.
Personal History
The Second Man in the Front Row: A Forgotten Story of the First World War
Reading my grandfather’s letters on the centenary of the Armistice.
Annals of History
A Hundred Years After the Armistice
If you think the First World War began senselessly, consider how it ended.
Art
Tauba Auerbach’s Dazzled Fireboat Travels the Hudson
To commemorate the end of the First World War, the artist decorated the boat using a technique originally invented to help boats hide from submarines.
