“...I used to tell people and friends that when they got down and felt that life was getting to be too hard or demanding, to read about the front during WWI and that it would help get them back into the proper perspective...”
I felt that way when I was reading “Lust for Life” a (fictionalized, I think) bio of Vincent Van Gogh. It was a huge best seller back when it first came out, and I think it was made into a movie.
At one point Van Gogh is serving as a pastor to a coal mining community (what country? I’m not sure, I sort of think France, but that seems wrong now). The people are dirt poor, and they don’t even get coal for their own fires, they have to scramble for and burn the, what? slag? Just the coal garbage.
Even the little children work in the mines, and it is so hot that the people work NAKED.
Oh my goodness. I have no idea how accurate any of this was, but I said to myself as I was reading it: no matter how terrible my life may become I will always be grateful to not be one of these poor coal miners!
Of course Van Gogh tries to stick up for them, of course the bosses and finally even the miners don’t appreciate his efforts.
I think I read through one or two more disappointments/failures of his and then I just gave up! His brother Theo really loved him though, that I will say.
And....back on topic, I thought Paths of Glory was one of the most powerful movies I’ve ever seen. And I only saw it once, on like the 4:30 movie, or something like that.
Someday I’ll watch it again, it was brutal but absolutely riveting.
Sounds like Emile Zola's Germinal.
I bet you would like one of my favorite movies, “The Southerner” by Jean Renoir, it is the conservatives choice over The Grapes of Wrath.
It is free at youtube.