Robert Capa: In Love and War 2002

“Hungarian refugee, antifascist, foremost chronicler of the Spanish civil war and D-Day, Life magazine’s golden boy, notorious gambler and womanizer, Henri Cartier-Bresson's colleague, lover of Ingrid Bergman, the ‘greatest war photographer in the world’ at age 25 and a journalistic martyr at 40: Robert Capa wore many distinctive hats during his lifetime. But as writer-director Anne Makepeace’s extraordinary American Masters documentary reminds us, his greatest accomplishment was turning the camera lens into a weapon against inhumanity. Turning a biographical testament into a moving picture album might seem frivolous for such a seminal figure of photojournalism; the end result, however, captures a legacy in which artistry and history collided through a shutter. Though scattered voice-overs, reminiscing peers, and anecdotes form the usual documentary-narrative skeleton, Makepeace wisely lets Capa’s groundbreaking body of work speak for itself when a thousand words prove ineffective.” — David Fear, San Francisco Bay Guardian