War film - Wikipedia. War film is a film genre concerned with warfare, typically about naval, air, or land battles, with combat scenes central to the drama. It has been strongly associated with the 2. Themes explored include combat, survival and escape, sacrifice, the futility and inhumanity of battle, the effects of war on society, and the moral and human issues raised by war.
War films are often categorized by their milieu, such as the Korean War; the most popular subject is the Second World War. The stories told may be fiction, historical drama, or biographical. Critics have noted similarities between the Western and the war film. Nations such as China, Indonesia, Japan, and Russia have their own traditions of war film, centred on their own revolutionary wars but taking varied forms, from action and historical drama to wartime romance. Subgenres, not necessarily distinct, include anti- war, comedy, animated, propaganda, and documentary. There are similarly subgenres of the war film in specific theatres such as the western desert (North Africa), the Pacific in the Second World War, or Vietnam; and films set in specific domains of war, such as the infantry, the air, at sea, in submarines, or at prisoner of war camps. The war film genre is not necessarily tightly defined: the American Film Institute, for example, speaks of . The director Sam Fuller defined the genre by saying that . However, Neale notes, films set in the American Civil War or the American Indian Wars of the 1. First World War. The critic Julian Smith argues, on the contrary, that the war film lacks the formal boundaries of a genre like the Western, but that in practice, . Both genres use opposing concepts like war and peace, civilization and savagery. War films usually frame World War II as a conflict between . They take place in the actual combat zones of World War II, against the established enemies, on the ground, the sea, or in the air. They contain many repeated events, such as mail call, all presented visually with appropriate uniforms, equipment, and iconography of battle. Further, Basinger considers Bataan to provide a definition- by- example of . She argues that the combat film is not a subgenre but the only genuine kind of war film. Since she notes that there were in fact only five true combat films made during the Second World War, in her view these few films, central to the genre, are outweighed by the many other films that lie on the margins of being war films. However, other critics such as Russell Earl Shain propose a far broader definition of war film, to include films that deal . This in turn pushes combat scenes to the climactic ends of war films. Not all critics agree, either, that war films must be about 2. James Clarke includes Edward Zwick's Oscar- winning Glory (1. American Civil War, and he lists six other films about that war which he considers . Vietnam War veteran and anti-war activist Ron Kovic wrote the autobiography Born on the Fourth of July, the basis of the Oliver Stone film starring Tom Cruise. NATIONAL LIBERATION FRONT (NLF) ANTI-AMERICAN LEAFLETS OF THE VIETNAM WAR Continued. SGM Herbert A. Friedman (Ret.) This Leaflet Lists Radio Frequencies and Broadcast. May 1971 anti-war protests and arrests on the Lexington, Massachusetts Battle Green Democracy & Dissent Note: this page of text is provided only for the convenience. One of the earliest films using the Civil War as its subject was D. W. Griffith's 1. 91. The Fugitive. Some films deal with the human aspects of the war, such as The Red Badge of Courage (1. These non- combat films were accompanied by . Topics included prisoners of war, covert operations, and military training. Both the Central Powers and the Allies produced war documentaries. The films were also used as propaganda in neutral countries like the United States. Among these was a film shot on the Eastern Front by official war photographer to the Central Powers, Albert K. Dawson: The Battle and Fall of Przemysl (1. Siege of Przemy. Much of the film was shot on location at the Western Front in France; it had a powerful emotional impact. It was watched by some 2. Britain in its six weeks of exhibition, making it what the critic Francine Stock called . ![]() ![]() Wellman's Wings (1. First World War, was the first film (in any genre), and the only silent film, to win an Oscar for best picture.! What a Lovely War (1. Sam Wood's For Whom the Bell Tolls (1. Ernest Hemingway's book of the same name, portrays the fated romance between an American played by Gary Cooper and a partisan played by Ingrid Bergman against the backdrop of the civil war. The epic 1. 68 minute film with its landscapes shot in Technicolor and a . War film is a film genre concerned with warfare, typically about naval, air, or land battles, with combat scenes central to the drama. It has been strongly associated. The critic Guy Westwell notes that it questioned the conduct of the war, as did later films like The Bridges at Toko- Ri (1. Pork Chop Hill (1. Fuller agreed that all his films were anti- war. No Hollywood films about the Korean War did well at the box office; the historian Lary May suggested that they reminded American viewers of . The 1. 96. 0s military government punished pro- communist film- makers and gave Grand Bell Awards to films with the strongest anti- communist message. Censorship loosened in the 1. The Taebaek Mountains (1. Silver Stallion (1. Spring in My Hometown (1. American military presence on village life. The violent action films Shiri (1. Joint Security Area (2. North Korea in a favourable light. The first was My Home Village (1. Korea from the Japanese, presented as the work of Kim Il Sung without help from the Americans. Similarly, the country's films about the Korean War show victory without help from the Chinese. The film scholar Johannes Sch. It was shot on location as an Italo- Algerian co- production. It had the black and white newsreel style of Italian neorealism, and even- handedly depicts violence on both sides. It won various awards including Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. The exceptions included The Green Berets (1. Critics such as Basinger explain that Hollywood avoided the subject because of opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, making the subject divisive; in addition, the film industry was in crisis, and the army did not wish to assist in making anti- war films. From the late 1. 97. Hollywood that Vietnam could be treated in film. Successful but very different portrayals of the war in which America had been defeated included Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1. Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1. With the shift in American politics to the right in the 1. Oliver Stone's Platoon (1. Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1. John Irvin's Hamburger Hill (1. The Vietnamese director Nguyen Hong Sen's The Abandoned Field: Free Fire Zone (Canh dong hoang, 1. The film cuts to an (American) . Films such as The Lion Has Wings and Target for Tonight were made under the control of the Films Division of the Ministry of Information. The British film industry began to combine documentary techniques with fictional stories in films like No. Air Force and U. S. Navy; the Army made its own through the U. S. Signal Corps, including John Huston's The Battle of San Pietro. Miniver (1. 94. 2), which portrayed a British family on the home front. Ilya Kopalin's documentary Moscow Strikes Back (Russian: . It depicted civilians helping to defend the city, the parade in Red Square and Stalin's speech rousing the Russian people to battle, actual fighting, Germans surrendering and dead, and atrocities including murdered children and hanged civilians. It won an Academy Award in 1. One of the first to attempt to represent violence, and which was praised at the time for . The depiction actually remained stylised: Jeanine Basinger gives as an example the . Basinger points out that while this is physically unrealistic, psychologically it may not have been. The wartime audience was, she points out, well aware of friends and relatives who had been killed or who had come home wounded. In Germany, the army high command brought out Sieg im Westen (. At over eight million marks, using thousands of soldiers as extras and 1. German film made during the war. The actual siege ended with the surrender of the town; in the film, the French generals abandon the siege. The government dispatched a . Tomotaka Tasaka's Mud and Soldiers (1. China, K. Japanese film critics worried that even with Western film techniques, their film output failed to represent native Japanese values. Heroes were typically low- ranking officers, not samurai, calmly devoted to his men and his country. These films did not personalise the enemy and therefore lacked hatred, though Great Britain could figure as the . For Japanese film- makers, war was not a cause but more like a natural disaster, and . Asian enemies, especially the Chinese, were often portrayed as redeemable and even possible marriage partners. Japanese wartime films do not glorify war, but present the Japanese state as one great family and the Japanese people as an . Dower comments that the perversity of this image . Like others of the period, The Cruel Sea was based on a bestselling novel, in this case the former naval commander Nicholas Monsarrat's story of the battle of the Atlantic. The Dam Busters became the most popular film in Britain in 1. In 1. 95. 7 alone, Bitter Victory, Count Five and Die, The Enemy Below, Ill Met by Moonlight, Men in War, The One That Got Away and Seven Thunders, and the highly successful, critically acclaimed pictures The Bridge on the River Kwai, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture that year, and Paths of Glory were released. By the end of the decade the . Marines considered Sands of Iwo Jima visually authentic, but found Lewis Milestone's Battle Cry (1. The formula for a successful war film consisted, according to Lawrence Suid, of a small group of ethnically diverse men; an unreasonable senior officer; cowards became heroic, or died. Jeanine Basinger suggests that a traditional war film should have a hero, a group, and an objective, and that the group should contain . Nazaire Raid, and Ill Met by Moonlight (1. German commander of Crete, inspired fictional adventure films such as The Guns of Navarone (1. The Train (1. 96. Where Eagles Dare (1. These used the war as a backdrop for spectacular action. Zanuck produced the 1. The Longest Day (1. D- Day landings, achieving commercial success and Oscars. In Lawrence Suid's view, The Longest Day . However, its cost also made it the last of the traditional war films, while the controversy around the help given by the U. S. Army and Zanuck's ! War and Anti- War Films War. Anti- War Films often acknowledge the horror and heartbreak of. Typical. elements in the action- oriented war plots include POW camp experiences and. Themes explored in war films include combat, survivor and. See this site's comprehensive selection of the Greatest War Movies. Some. war films do balance the soul- searching, tragic consequences and inner. But many of them provide decisive. War films have often been used as 'flag- waving' propaganda. Jingoistic- type war films usually. The good guys are portrayed. Huns,' or 'nips'). These revisionistic, politically- correct and. Sands of Iwo. Jima (1. The Alamo(1. 96. 0), would often redefine the. War films can also make political statements - unpopular wars. Vietnam War and the Iraq War), have generated both supportive. Robert Altman's M*A*S*H (1. Kenneth Branagh's Henry V (1. Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit. War films are often paired with other genres, such as romance, comedy (black), and suspense- thrillers. Some are actually westerns masquerading as war films. This genre has existed since the earliest years of cinematic. Film- makers have been provided ample opportunities. American history, stretching from the French and Indian. Wars to the Vietnam War. In particular, the many wars of the 2. First and Second World Wars, but also subsequent wars) have. War films as a major film genre emerged. World War I. Earliest War Films: The first war film to be documented was a one- reel, 9. Vitagraph Company's fictitious Tearing Down the. Spanish Flag (1. 89. Spanish- American War. Army troops, the removal of the foreign flag. Stars and Stripes. One of the first to show the. Great War's European conflict, thereby. Vitagraph's. silent film drama The Battle Cry of Peace (1. Norma Talmadge. It proposed the idea of what would happen if America was invaded on its own soil by a hostile European power and taken over, with an invasion of New York City. In 1. 91. 8 in particular, many films documented the momentous sinking of the Lusitania in May of 1. German U- boat and argued for US entrance into the war, such as Vitagraph's Over the Top (1. James Owen joining the British army after the Lusitania's sinking) and Winsor Mc. Kay's short animated film The Sinking of the Lusitania (1. Early. filmmakers steered away from making war pictures because of their enormous. Hollywood. producers did not recognize the box- office potential of propagandist war and. D. Griffith's influential Civil War. Thomas Dixon's The Clansman, The Birth Of A Nation (1. Southern Camerons and the Northern Stonemans. The film. included semi- documentary, panoramic battle scenes and other historical events. Civil War era. A few major films argued for pacifism, such as producer Thomas Ince's preachy epic film Civilization (1. Christ himself toured the Emperor through the devastating results of war and preached a message of Love (not War). Griffith's 4- strand epic Intolerance (1. One of the most popular hit songs of 1. This was evidenced by the new hit song of the time, George M. Cohan's Over There (1. Americans were persuaded to buy 'liberty' war bonds, often by movie stars, to help finance the war. Hollywood director D. Griffith's Hearts of. World (1. 91. 8) was a sentimental, propagandistic film to encourage US. European conflict of the first world war - it included actual. British War Office and the French Government). European film- making centers were in ruins, giving Hollywood the boost it needed. Hollywood was now responsible for 8. US film production and New York controlled world film distribution. The anti- war film that made. Rudolf Valentino a star was Rex Ingram's very successful The Four Horsemen. Apocalypse (1. 92. WWI as a backdrop for its story of. Appearing around the same era to express the freedoms of. American democracy was Griffith's epic America (1. American Revolution with innumerable set- pieces (the ride of. Paul Revere, Wintering at Valley Forge, etc.). A Revival of War Films in the Mid- 1. War films were revived in the. MGM's and King Vidor's The Big Parade (1. It also told of a love affair between an American doughboy. John Gilbert) and a French peasant girl (Renee Adoree). The film was a spectacular success, and made more money than any other MGM film production up to its time. MGM wished to repeat the film's success with Tell It To the Marines (1. Lon Chaney as tough Marine sergeant, O'Hara (Chaney's own favorite role, a 'straight' one without makeup). Next to Garbo's Flesh and the Devil (1. MGM's second most profitable film of the year. Director Raoul Walsh's. What Price Glory? Quirt (Victor Mc. Laglen and Edmund Lowe), who were fighting in WWI in France. It also showed the two comrades as rivals among. French village girl named Charmaine. Dolores Del Rio) - in many semi- comic scenes, they would obviously be swearing and using profanities toward each other (decipherable if one could read lips), but the title cards reflected more dignified talk: (! Personally, I'd as soon find a skunk in my sleeping bag. It was the first film (and only silent film) to be. Best Picture. It was the first film to introduce sound effects on a separate strip of film, and with dogfight scenes shot in the air (and not in the studio). Starring both . The. Possibly the greatest anti- war. Erich Maria Remarque that viewed. Great War from the German point of view. All of the young idealistic German youths. Fatherland become disillusioned. It portrayed soldiers as human. The film ended simplistically on the day of Armistice - - young soldier Paul's (Lew Ayres) death to the sound of the whine of a French sniper's bullet as. The film's final images were composed of ghostly soldiers marching away, while superimposed over a dark, battle- scarred. A similar, accurate account. German film- maker/director G. Pabst's first talkie Westfront. Comrades of 1. 91. German and French soldiers on the Western Front. WWI. Howard Hawks' melodramatic anti- war film The Road to Glory (1. WWI trench warfare of the French, starring Fredric. March and Warner Baxter as officers of a weary regiment of French soldiers. Because. WWI was a decidedly difficult subject to look back upon, movie- goers preferred. The Dawn Patrol (1. Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Flynn also starred in director. Michael Curtiz' historically- inaccurate The Charge of the Light Brigade. Crimean War, that also included a romantic pairing with 1. Olivia. de Havilland. Then, in the late 1. French filmmaker Jean Renoir attempted. La Grande Illusion. Fr.), set in a WWI German prison camp in 1. French officer faced a dilemma regarding his escape with other POWs. Keep those lights burning there! Cover. them with steel! Ring them with guns! Build a canopy of battleships and bombing. Hello, America! Hang on to your lights. They're the only. Hitler. banned German audiences from viewing the picture due to its offensive characterization. American audiences believed that Chaplin had become self- indulgent. Robinson and Paul Lukas, about a Nazi. US. The beautiful romantic tragedy and. Waterloo Bridge (1. Vivien. Leigh) whose love affair with a British officer (Robert Taylor) was shattered. World War II. For Whom the Bell Tolls (1. Ernest Hemingway, told the story of Robert Jordan (Gary Cooper). American demolition expert who gave his abilities to the Anti- Fascist freedom. Spain in the 1. 93. A realistic portrayal of the demands of career military life. US involvement in WWII was examined in Fred Zinnemann's multi- awarded. Best Picture- winning From Here to Eternity (1. James Jones' novel. It starred Burt Lancaster as a tough sergeant. Montgomery Clift as a bugler/private, Deborah Kerr as a commander's unfulfilled. Donna Reed as a local prostitute. During. the war years before the American entrance into the conflict, many Hollywood. Germans. and Japanese and clean- living, all- American soldiers. One of the most effective. US patriotism was Sergeant York (1. Gary Cooper (who won a Best Actor Academy Award for his role as a real- life. Tennessee farmer). The film was a biography. American hero of World War I during the Battle. Argonne - pacifist Sergeant Alvin C. And in the flag- waving The. Fighting 6. 9th (1. James Cagney starred as one member of a famed Irish- American. Rainbow Division's 1. Infantry of New York, that fought. WWI. Now. on the brink of war in late 1. Henry King's romantic drama A. Yank in the R. A. F. Zanuck to. encourage support for American entry into WWII to aid Britain and France. Director Michael Curtiz' Dive. Bomber (1. 94. 1) with exciting aerial footage was released by Warner Bros. The film was the directorial debut of David Lean with Noel Coward as producer. Director Carol Reed's semi- documentary Immortal. Batallion (1. 94. The Way Ahead) followed the training of army. David Niven as they became a hardened combat team. A. British version of the homefront struggle illustrating UK resolve against. Nazi aggression was told in a sentimental story of an English middle- class. WW II (including the Dunkirk evacuation and. William Wyler's multi- award- winning Mrs. Miniver (1. 94. 2). Best Picture of its year. The film ended with a memorable speech by the. Vicar (Henry Wilcoxon) preaching in a bombed out church: . It is our war. We are the fighters. Fight it, then. Fight it. God defend the right..
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