Name a Hollywood movie about World War II. Easy, right? "Saving Private Ryan" probably comes to mind. Think about it for a few seconds and
Name a Hollywood movie about World War II. Easy, right? "Saving Private Ryan" probably comes to mind. Think about it for a few seconds and more titles will flood in: "The Sands of Iwo Jima," "The Big Red One," "The English Patient," "The Dirty Dozen," "Raiders of the Lost Arc," "Casablanca," "Battleground," "The Longest Day," "The Best Years of Our Lives," "The Great Escape," "Stalag 17," "Tora, Tora, Tora."
Now, name a Hollywood film about World War I - besides "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "Gallipoli." There is Dalton Trumbo's disturbing screen version of his novel "Johnny Got His Gun" and Stanley Kubrick's "Paths of Glory," and some others, but they are hard to recall.
There is a preponderance of Hollywood films about World War II. Although, the war remains the single greatest human endeavor in history, which gives it more than enough reason to still loom so large in the collective consciousness, it does not explain why World War I, a war similar in scope, has been so largely ignored. Hollywood, always looking for new material, seems to have blacklisted "The Great War" from its story department. This despite the fact that the war movie has always been one of its most successful genres.
In the depiction of war and battle the filmmaker is free to explore every side of man's nature, from bravery to cowardice, gut-wrenching drama to the lowest comedy. War provides situations in which men are forced to overcome incredible odds, creating the opportunity for tense drama. Interestingly, it also allows them to more boldly express their emotions. Men, not usually allowed to openly express emotions, are allowed new outlets: the soldier is able to cry for his mother or embrace a dying comrade without fear of being considered weak.
Indeed, World War II was the quintessential "Hollywood" war. Hollywood films traditionally are centered on basic dramatic themes: Good vs. Evil, Heroism vs. Cowardice, The Underdog vs. The Big Boss. These conflicts were evoked dynamically in World War II. From their shiny boots to their extravagant uniforms and mechanistic uniformity, Nazism provided the bad-guy to end all bad-guys, a combination of arch villains from film and literary history, personified disturbingly in the figure of Adolf Hitler.
"Our boys," as cinematic foils to this totalitarian regimentation, were always portrayed as individuals. From Frank Sinatra's Maggio to George C. Scott's Patton, American soldiers have been portrayed as dirty and course, but always on the side of freedom and righteousness. The World War II soldier, like America itself, is the great Hollywood archetype: the reluctant hero.
Combine these protagonists and antagonists with the fight for freedom and a plot for world domination and you have the epic storytelling Hollywood thrives upon. However, these portrayals are not reality. Not all Germans were sniveling Nazis and not all American soldiers were heroic. However, most Hollywood World War II films were not made to depict reality, their purpose was to be entertaining and therefore they inevitably gloss over the inherent futility of warfare and the mind-boggling harm it inflicts both mentally and physically on those who participate in it.
But what about World War I ? How did American get involved? What were we fighting for? What did our victory achieve for the world? Ask the man on the street and you get blank stares and the scratching of heads. In a similar way, any artistic examination of that war calls upon the filmmaker to confront more complex issues. Our motive in WWI was not as simple and the loss to our country in lives not as easily justified. Thus, it is not as easy for Hollywood to reduce it to the basic archetypes that it needs for entertainment.
World War I was entered by a large group of young men from many nations who grew up with their fathers' and grandfathers' tales of heroism and glory found on the field of battle. There were a handful of wars still fresh in the consciousness - the Boer War and the Spanish American War - and the young enlistees were lured in by the heavily romanticized exploits from these conflicts passed down from generations before.
However, the soldiers of World War I were not ready for the horror of modern warfare that awaited them. Advances in weaponry, from artillery batteries to machine guns, turned the field of battle into an immense sausage grinder, shredding scores of young men into unrecognizable corpses and transforming the ones who survived into embittered, prematurely old men. It was an international tragedy the likes of which, at that time, had never been seen.
It is this innocence that makes World War One a difficult Hollywood story. Our country sent soldiers into a type of combat they were not prepared for, fighting for a cause that was not fully understood.
How does one turn an event like this into a rousing show for the whole family to enjoy? Films like "Paths of Glory," arguably one of Stanley Kubrick's finest films, is one of the greatest anti-war pictures of all time is hardly popcorn movie. Then there is "Johnny Got His Gun," an effective and damning document of warfare and modern technological society, in which the "hero" is a soldier who has had both legs, both arms, and most of his face shot off, only kept alive by modern medicine.
Both of these films are set in World War I, but are more about the horrors of war in general. WWI, because of its murky morality, shuns broad characterizations and demands more attention to ambiguity, which is why the few films about WWI are inevitably anti-way statements. World War I, as opposed to being an end in itself, lends itself more to becoming a cautionary tale, a warning (most often unheeded) to future generations.
In contrast, most of the great World War II films that hang in our memories treat the war as one great big adventure. In the same way that WWI provides a convenient backdrop to moral dilemmas, "The Good War" is the perfect backdrop for epic drama. This is not to say that they are bad films. "The Great Escape," "The Dirty Dozen" and "The Longest Day," are all cracker-jack action movies. At best they provide great entertainment, but at worst they serve as a cheering-squad for war. Few films about WWII deliver any real philosophic depth, aside from the empty cliché that "War is Hell... but a kick-ass hell!"
"Saving Private Ryan," the most recent big-budget Hollywood picture about the second world war, does, to its credit, present one of the most honest and harrowing depiction's of battle in the history of filmmaking. But no matter how horrific the scenes of invasion of Normandy, nor matter how much suffering the men endured, the point is made painfully clear that it HAD TO BE DONE. So even if "Saving Private Ryan" is a World War II film "informed by the Vietnam experience" as many critics have stated, it is still unlike the films made about that war in one crucially fundamental way: the filmmaker never calls into our question our reason for being there. The soldiers under Captain Miller's command may have been able to question the purpose of their mission, but not a single one of them would have questioned the purpose of war itself.
In the coming months a handful of new films are coming out about World War II, most notably Terence Malick's film adaptation of James Jones's follow-up to "From Here To Eternity" - "The Thin Red Line" - proving once again that Hollywood cannot leave this war alone. Maybe the first World War is too far away and Vietnam is too close, and that is why we find ourselves going back again and again to the second World War. Or maybe we just do not like what we see when we do go back to those other Twentieth Century wars. We can only hope that, like "Saving Private Ryan," the new batch of movies go at least some way toward illuminating warfare beyond empty heroics and fist-pumping patriotism. It is the least Hollywood could do to honor the veterans who provided them with such as cash cow over the past fifty years.
Is it bad for American society, then, to have the preponderance of war films be about "The Good War," as opposed to "The Great War" ? Not necessarily. During the 1940s and 1950s, when so many war films were released, it was merely a reflection of the national consciousness. The generation who fought the war did not need horrifically detailed accounts of the battles and the insanity of war because they were there, they experiences it, and by extension, so did their families. While these post-war films were not probing art, they were at least a healthy remedy for our returning veterans, to not only be treated as heroes by their community, but by Hollywood as well.
What is troubling about concentrating on that war now, to the exclusion of all other wars, comes from the times in which we live. Over the past five years, America has emerged from a brief recession to find itself in the middle of a tremendously prosperous economy, rivaling even the post-war boom years of the 1950s. It has been nearly twenty-five years since the last prolonged conflict involving the United States military, and yet the U.S. is still entrenched in World Politics. However, the WWII phenomenon of a united evil enemy no longer a threat. Today's fractured state of global politics resemble 1914, much more than they do 1941 and yet instead of investigating that period, we remain fixated on our triumphs of World War II.
The second World War was a unique set of circumstances that may be unparalleled in history. The United States had the closest thing to a moral imperative it has ever had to become involved in a war. This was not a complicated system of alliances that would ultimately drag the nations of the West into a war no one really wanted to fight - like World War I - but a clear cut assault on our beliefs and freedoms, and a plea for assistance from our allies. By using this war as the gold standard by which all war movies are made, we are cheating the current generation out of a real appreciation for the wages of warfare when the goals are not so lofty and the suffering runs so deep.
Name a Hollywood movie about World War II. Easy, right? "Saving Private Ryan" probably comes to mind. Think about it for a few seconds and more titles will flood in: "The Sands of Iwo Jima," "The Big Red One," "The English Patient," "The Dirty Dozen," "Raiders of the Lost Arc," "Casablanca," "Battleground," "The Longest Day," "The Best Years of Our Lives," "The Great Escape," "Stalag 17," "Tora, Tora, Tora."
Now, name a Hollywood film about World War I - besides "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "Gallipoli." There is Dalton Trumbo's disturbing screen version of his novel "Johnny Got His Gun" and Stanley Kubrick's "Paths of Glory," and some others, but they are hard to recall.
There is a preponderance of Hollywood films about World War II. Although, the war remains the single greatest human endeavor in history, which gives it more than enough reason to still loom so large in the collective consciousness, it does not explain why World War I, a war similar in scope, has been so largely ignored. Hollywood, always looking for new material, seems to have blacklisted "The Great War" from its story department. This despite the fact that the war movie has always been one of its most successful genres.
In the depiction of war and battle the filmmaker is free to explore every side of man's nature, from bravery to cowardice, gut-wrenching drama to the lowest comedy. War provides situations in which men are forced to overcome incredible odds, creating the opportunity for tense drama. Interestingly, it also allows them to more boldly express their emotions. Men, not usually allowed to openly express emotions, are allowed new outlets: the soldier is able to cry for his mother or embrace a dying comrade without fear of being considered weak.
Indeed, World War II was the quintessential "Hollywood" war. Hollywood films traditionally are centered on basic dramatic themes: Good vs. Evil, Heroism vs. Cowardice, The Underdog vs. The Big Boss. These conflicts were evoked dynamically in World War II. From their shiny boots to their extravagant uniforms and mechanistic uniformity, Nazism provided the bad-guy to end all bad-guys, a combination of arch villains from film and literary history, personified disturbingly in the figure of Adolf Hitler.
"Our boys," as cinematic foils to this totalitarian regimentation, were always portrayed as individuals. From Frank Sinatra's Maggio to George C. Scott's Patton, American soldiers have been portrayed as dirty and course, but always on the side of freedom and righteousness. The World War II soldier, like America itself, is the great Hollywood archetype: the reluctant hero.
Combine these protagonists and antagonists with the fight for freedom and a plot for world domination and you have the epic storytelling Hollywood thrives upon. However, these portrayals are not reality. Not all Germans were sniveling Nazis and not all American soldiers were heroic. However, most Hollywood World War II films were not made to depict reality, their purpose was to be entertaining and therefore they inevitably gloss over the inherent futility of warfare and the mind-boggling harm it inflicts both mentally and physically on those who participate in it.
But what about World War I ? How did American get involved? What were we fighting for? What did our victory achieve for the world? Ask the man on the street and you get blank stares and the scratching of heads. In a similar way, any artistic examination of that war calls upon the filmmaker to confront more complex issues. Our motive in WWI was not as simple and the loss to our country in lives not as easily justified. Thus, it is not as easy for Hollywood to reduce it to the basic archetypes that it needs for entertainment.
World War I was entered by a large group of young men from many nations who grew up with their fathers' and grandfathers' tales of heroism and glory found on the field of battle. There were a handful of wars still fresh in the consciousness - the Boer War and the Spanish American War - and the young enlistees were lured in by the heavily romanticized exploits from these conflicts passed down from generations before.
However, the soldiers of World War I were not ready for the horror of modern warfare that awaited them. Advances in weaponry, from artillery batteries to machine guns, turned the field of battle into an immense sausage grinder, shredding scores of young men into unrecognizable corpses and transforming the ones who survived into embittered, prematurely old men. It was an international tragedy the likes of which, at that time, had never been seen.
It is this innocence that makes World War One a difficult Hollywood story. Our country sent soldiers into a type of combat they were not prepared for, fighting for a cause that was not fully understood.
How does one turn an event like this into a rousing show for the whole family to enjoy? Films like "Paths of Glory," arguably one of Stanley Kubrick's finest films, is one of the greatest anti-war pictures of all time is hardly popcorn movie. Then there is "Johnny Got His Gun," an effective and damning document of warfare and modern technological society, in which the "hero" is a soldier who has had both legs, both arms, and most of his face shot off, only kept alive by modern medicine.
Both of these films are set in World War I, but are more about the horrors of war in general. WWI, because of its murky morality, shuns broad characterizations and demands more attention to ambiguity, which is why the few films about WWI are inevitably anti-way statements. World War I, as opposed to being an end in itself, lends itself more to becoming a cautionary tale, a warning (most often unheeded) to future generations.
In contrast, most of the great World War II films that hang in our memories treat the war as one great big adventure. In the same way that WWI provides a convenient backdrop to moral dilemmas, "The Good War" is the perfect backdrop for epic drama. This is not to say that they are bad films. "The Great Escape," "The Dirty Dozen" and "The Longest Day," are all cracker-jack action movies. At best they provide great entertainment, but at worst they serve as a cheering-squad for war. Few films about WWII deliver any real philosophic depth, aside from the empty cliché that "War is Hell... but a kick-ass hell!"
"Saving Private Ryan," the most recent big-budget Hollywood picture about the second world war, does, to its credit, present one of the most honest and harrowing depiction's of battle in the history of filmmaking. But no matter how horrific the scenes of invasion of Normandy, nor matter how much suffering the men endured, the point is made painfully clear that it HAD TO BE DONE. So even if "Saving Private Ryan" is a World War II film "informed by the Vietnam experience" as many critics have stated, it is still unlike the films made about that war in one crucially fundamental way: the filmmaker never calls into our question our reason for being there. The soldiers under Captain Miller's command may have been able to question the purpose of their mission, but not a single one of them would have questioned the purpose of war itself.
In the coming months a handful of new films are coming out about World War II, most notably Terence Malick's film adaptation of James Jones's follow-up to "From Here To Eternity" - "The Thin Red Line" - proving once again that Hollywood cannot leave this war alone. Maybe the first World War is too far away and Vietnam is too close, and that is why we find ourselves going back again and again to the second World War. Or maybe we just do not like what we see when we do go back to those other Twentieth Century wars. We can only hope that, like "Saving Private Ryan," the new batch of movies go at least some way toward illuminating warfare beyond empty heroics and fist-pumping patriotism. It is the least Hollywood could do to honor the veterans who provided them with such as cash cow over the past fifty years.
Is it bad for American society, then, to have the preponderance of war films be about "The Good War," as opposed to "The Great War" ? Not necessarily. During the 1940s and 1950s, when so many war films were released, it was merely a reflection of the national consciousness. The generation who fought the war did not need horrifically detailed accounts of the battles and the insanity of war because they were there, they experiences it, and by extension, so did their families. While these post-war films were not probing art, they were at least a healthy remedy for our returning veterans, to not only be treated as heroes by their community, but by Hollywood as well.
What is troubling about concentrating on that war now, to the exclusion of all other wars, comes from the times in which we live. Over the past five years, America has emerged from a brief recession to find itself in the middle of a tremendously prosperous economy, rivaling even the post-war boom years of the 1950s. It has been nearly twenty-five years since the last prolonged conflict involving the United States military, and yet the U.S. is still entrenched in World Politics. However, the WWII phenomenon of a united evil enemy no longer a threat. Today's fractured state of global politics resemble 1914, much more than they do 1941 and yet instead of investigating that period, we remain fixated on our triumphs of World War II.
The second World War was a unique set of circumstances that may be unparalleled in history. The United States had the closest thing to a moral imperative it has ever had to become involved in a war. This was not a complicated system of alliances that would ultimately drag the nations of the West into a war no one really wanted to fight - like World War I - but a clear cut assault on our beliefs and freedoms, and a plea for assistance from our allies. By using this war as the gold standard by which all war movies are made, we are cheating the current generation out of a real appreciation for the wages of warfare when the goals are not so lofty and the suffering runs so deep.
