Doing Battle With the War Scenes in ‘Private Ryan’

After reading “Rating the Big One” (Calendar, July 15) and another article about Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan,” I have no intention of seeing the movie. Spielberg slams past movies about World War II because they did not explicitly show the blood and guts of war.

What movies like “The Men” and “Pride of the Marines,” among others, did have were intelligently written scripts, good acting and tight editing, which presented emotional portraits of the effects of war on those who served and those who were left behind. Filmmakers who respect the intelligence of the audience spur us to think and imagine. The noises we hear when we turn off the lights at night are far more terrifying than any scary story, exactly because our imaginations are allowed to run free.

CAROL MAY

Los Angeles

My 84-year-old father-in-law served with Patton in Normandy, landing at Omaha Beach a few weeks after D-day. He usually deflected my questions about what the fighting was like as his 5th Division swept through France before the Battle of the Bulge.

In the months before his recent death, he finally told me of the horrors he had witnessed and survived in 1944 and 1945.

What I do not get from your article is any sense that any of the now elderly soldiers from D-day participated in the making of “Saving Private Ryan.” Until we hear their reactions, it will be hard to judge how close to reality Steven Spielberg came.

GREG MEYER

Los Angeles