Richard Schickel's memoir of life and movies during WWII, is a book that not "only a film scholar could write", but one that only THIS film scholar could write. To those of us of, as they say, a certain age, it offers a fascinating re-evaluation of the films of WWII, as well as a compelling portratit of growing up in America at the time. Indeed, if the book has a flaw for those of us old enough to remember the films in their original release, it is the lack of precise dates of release of many of them. HOWEVER, one does have to ask (and my rating of 4, rather than 5, stars offers my answer), who, besides me, Schickel, and our co-age group, is the book for? While his insights into all the films he cites are meticulous, the vast majority of them are not only obscure to most film goers, but DESERVEDLY so.
The writing is, as one would expect, always compelling; the portrait of America, film, and the intertwining of the two to an impressionable public, is flawless. Indeed, the subject not only should have been covered, but needed to be. But, will the average film buff, let alone the average reader, be as enthralled as I was? Alas, I tend to doubt it, but I'm grateful it was done, anyway.

There are many book about American films made during World War II. What sets this book apart from most of those is that Schickel focuses on the movies he saw at the time of the war as a child, giving us a double perspective: the child watching the film then and the adult watching the films again now.

Thus there are some gaps. The young Schickel, unsurprisingly, avoided the Preston Sturges comedies, and so these do not play a big part in the book. However, what we do get is a believable and convincing look at how the public perceived these films (Hangmen Also Die, The Human Comedy, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo) at the time.

A nice thing is that Schickel, although he makes it clear he finds some of these movies mendacious, never takes a snide, wise guy attitude but remembers his childish delight in these films, while as an adult he can pick out the flaws.

The book is not just a look at films of 1941-5. It is also a memoir, so there is material about growing up and becoming a film critic. I found this interesting, as Schickel is one of my favorite critics. (His book on D. W. Griffith is superb.) However, people only interested in wartime films, and not also in Schickel, might be advised to get it from the library.

Richard Schickel's exceptionally well written memoir is mainly about his World War II boyhood. Aimed at getting to the truth of the matter, "Good Morning, Mr. Zip Zip Zip" has a lot to say about the "Greatest Generation" which Tom Brokaw recently made into a media and popular culture industry. But Schickel prefers reality, making him the natural enemy of banal sentimentality. He'd rather face real unglamorous guts and gore than give in to jingoistic romantic mythology. By the way, the book's title derives from the earliest recollection Schickel has of a song from World War I that his father would sing to him at bedtime.

The thirteen chapters of "Good Morning, Mr. Zip Zip Zip" very personally cover Schickel's middle class, Wisconsin American boyhood and his family experiences. It was his grandfather who had "spoiled" him with all kinds of indulgences and who showered him with books. Hanging on his Grandpa's every fascinating word had obscured, until later, Schickel's realization that the man intruded on every aspect of his family's life. But it was his father who introduced Schickel at a tender age to the magic of movies, making him a lifelong addict.

Naturally, Schickel uses movies as a vehicle for reexamining his World War II generation because he is both Time Magazine's distinguished movie critic and also a prominent documentary filmmaker in his own right. Indeed, his documentary film "The Birth of Soviet Cinema" is still very popular for analyzing in serious film programs on American college campuses the propaganda of Soviet film since World War I.

I liked Schickel's "Good Morning, Mr. Zip Zip Zip" because he revisits my boyhood World War II, and all wars, to critically separate naïve mythology from hard-nosed reality. Schickel accomplishes this by reexamining Hollywood war movies steeped in romantic propaganda, contrasting them with unpopular, obscure documentaries and little known actual footage from war photographers that had been very carefully edited for American newsreels.

"During World War II, in the midst of my burgeoning life, I was surrounded -- as we all were -- by death on a scale unprecedented in human history. Yet it was constantly lied about. In the movies particularly, tragedy was almost always subsumed in triumphalism, mortality broadly hinted suggestions of heroic immortality. Thus begins Schickel's introductory section, "Prologue: Wartime Lies."

Examining how history repeats itself is another good reason for reading "Good Morning, Mr. Zip Zip Zip." .Although Schickel's book mainly talks about the mid 20th century, we are clearly experiencing similarly orchestrated mythology in our present "greatest generation." But at least one big difference is that before Americans plunged into war, Adolph Hitler's armies had ravaged western and eastern Europe and the Japanese had overrun China, Indochina and menaced Australia while advancing closer to us.

Franklin D. Roosevelt didn't have to invent lies about clear and present dangers to the United States -- especially after the Japanese military had bombed Pearl Harbor. But George W. Bush got his war in Iraq by lying about Sadam Hussein as a similar threat to America thus demonstrating, the Big Lie can still be made to work today as it did in Schickel's World War II.

Schickel tells us about his intense anti-Joe McCarthyism as editor of his college's newspaper. But, oddly, he doesn't mention the prominent World War II communist, novelist and screenwriter Howard Fast ["Citizen Tom Paine," "Sparticus"]. After creating and heading Voice of America for the War in the 1940s, Fast had become the first American political prisoner, jailed for refusing to answer questions for the House Un-American Activities Committee. But Schickel's book also doesn't say much about Oliver Stone's post-World War II war films ["Platoon," "Born on the Fourth of July"] that starkly contrast with the pablum of John Wayne's and Ronald Reagan's filmography.

In Schickel's (and my) final conclusion in the chapter titled, "The Evil of Banality," he writes, " ... But it is all I have to offer -- a small flickering light burning amidst all the false remembrance, forgiving sentiment, smug triumphalism, that rolls in like the morning low clouds that form over the distant and mysterious sea, distorting an already dimming picture."