A deeply personal meditation on the haunting power of American photos
and films of the 1940s
Wartime Kiss is a personal meditation on the haunting power of
American photographs and films from World War II and the later 1940s.
Starting with a stunning reinterpretation of one of the most famous
photos of all time, Alfred Eisenstaedt's image of a sailor kissing a
nurse in Times Square on V-J Day, Alexander Nemerov goes on to examine
an array of mostly forgotten images and movie episodes--from a photo of
Jimmy Stewart and Olivia de Havilland lying on a picnic blanket in the
Santa Barbara hills to scenes from such films as Twelve O'Clock High
and Hold Back the Dawn. Erotically charged and bearing traces of
trauma even when they seem far removed from the war, these photos and
scenes seem to hold out the promise of a palpable and emotional
connection to those years.
Through a series of fascinating stories, Nemerov reveals the surprising
background of these bits of film and discovers unexpected connections
between the war and Hollywood, from an obsession with aviation to Anne
Frank's love of the movies. Beautifully written and illustrated,
Wartime Kiss vividly evokes a world in which Margaret Bourke-White
could follow a heroic assignment photographing a B-17 bombing mission
over Tunis with a job in Hollywood documenting the filming of a war
movie. Ultimately this is a book about history as a sensuous experience,
a work as mysterious, indescribable, and affecting as a novel by W. G.
Sebald.
