Frequently referred to as “the Greatest Generation,” Americans of the World War II era were influenced by Hollywood’s depictions of their nation, its role in world affairs, and the virtue of its involvement in the war. Stories of the bravery and heroism of the American military—as well as the moral and political threat posed by the enemy—filled movie screens across the country to garner passionate support for wartime policies. In Hollywood Enlists! Propaganda Films of World War II, Ralph Donald explores how the studios supported the war effort and helped shape the attitudes of an entire generation. Through films the studios appealed to the public’s sense of nationalism, demonized the enemy, and stressed that wartime sacrifices would result in triumph. The author contends that American films of the period used sophisticated, but often overlooked, strategies of propaganda to ideologically unite the country. While these strategies have long been associated with political speeches and writings during the war, little in-depth consideration has been given to their use in the era’s cinema. By examining major motion pictures—including Casablanca, The Flying Tigers, Mrs. Miniver, Sergeant York, They Were Expendable, and many others—Donald illustrates how various propaganda techniques aligned the nation’s entertainment with government aims. Hollywood Enlists! will appeal to readers with interests in war films and motion picture history, as well as politics and social history.
The little-explored story of how politics, propaganda, and profits were combined to create the drama, imagery and fantasy that was American film during World War II. 32 black-and-white photographs.
Topics include: the influence of Leni Riefenstahl; negro soldiers; depicting Vietnam in films. Films examined include: Sergeant York, Air force, Saving Private Ryan, The thin red line.
During the Second World War, over 300 Hollywood motion pictures were produced that, in one way or another, bore the propaganda imprimatur. These popular movies -- and they consistently glorified the achievements of the American fighting man while vilifying all the members of the Axis pact -- and fostered morale on the Home Front and stood as tangible reminders that Old Glory, mom, apple pie, and the St. Louis Browns would emerge victorious from this global conflict. But how successful was Hollywood's effort? Citing numerous examples of flag-waving dialogue, Professor Fyne has produced an in-depth study that examines these WWII movies, analyzing many motifs, stereotypes, fiction-as-fact, distortions, and prevarications that permeate this genre. His book lists the ten best titles of the war and discusses such topics as the World War I influence, the different approaches toward the Italian, German, and Japanese military machines, the glorification of the Soviet forces, the image of the Chinese nationals, the light-hearted B-comedies, musicals, and Westerns, plus the American GI's inner frustration with his fabricated photoplay image. For historians, film watchers, or social commentators, this book, complete with elaborate filmography, offers important information about Hollywood's role in shaping the Home Front mores.
The immediacy and perceived truth of the visual image, as well as film and television's ability to propel viewers back into the past, place the genre of the historical film in a special category. War films--including antiwar films--have established the prevailing public image of war in the twentieth century. For American audiences, the dominant image of trench warfare in World War I has been provided by feature films such as All Quiet on the Western Front and Paths of Glory. The image of combat in the Second World War has been shaped by films like Sands of Iwo Jima and The Longest Day. And despite claims for the alleged impact of widespread television coverage of the Vietnam War, it is actually films such as Apocalypse Now and Platoon which have provided the most powerful images of what is seen as the "reality" of that much disputed conflict. But to what degree does history written "with lightning," as Woodrow Wilson allegedly said, represent the reality of the past? To what extent is visual history an oversimplification, or even a distortion of the past? Exploring the relationship between moving images and the society and culture in which they were produced and received, World War II, Film, and History addresses the power these images have had in determining our perception and memories of war. Examining how the public memory of war in the twentieth century has often been created more by a manufactured past than a remembered one, a leading group of historians discusses films dating from the early 1930s through the early 1990s, created by filmmakers the world over, from the United States and Germany to Japan and the former Soviet Union. For example, Freda Freiberg explains how the inter-racial melodramatic Japanese feature film China Nights, in which a manly and protective Japanese naval officer falls in love with a beautiful young Chinese street waif and molds her into a cultured, submissive wife, proved enormously popular with wartime Japanese and helped justify the invasion of China in the minds of many Japanese viewers. Peter Paret assesses the historical accuracy of Kolberg as a depiction of an unsuccessful siege of that German city by a French Army in 1807, and explores how the film, released by Hitler's regime in January 1945, explicitly called for civilian sacrifice and last-ditch resistance. Stephen Ambrose contrasts what we know about the historical reality of the Allied D-Day landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944, with the 1962 release of The Longest Day, in which the major climactic moment in the film never happened at Normandy. Alice Kessler-Harris examines The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter, a 1982 film documentary about women defense workers on the American home front in World War II, emphasizing the degree to which the documentary's engaging main characters and its message of the need for fair and equal treatment for women resonates with many contemporary viewers. And Clement Alexander Price contrasts Men of Bronze, William Miles's fine documentary about black American soldiers who fought in France in World War I, with Liberators, the controversial documentary by Miles and Nina Rosenblum which incorrectly claimed that African-American troops liberated Holocaust survivors at Dachau in World War II. In today's visually-oriented world, powerful images, even images of images, are circulated in an eternal cycle, gaining increased acceptance through repetition. History becomes an endless loop, in which repeated images validate and reconfirm each other. Based on archival materials, many of which have become only recently available, World War II, Film, and History offers an informative and a disturbing look at the complex relationship between national myths and filmic memory, as well as the dangers of visual images being transformed into "reality."
From 1937 through 1945, Hollywood produced over 1,000 films relating to the war. This enormous and exhaustive reference work first analyzes the war films as sociopolitical documents. Part one, entitled "The Crisis Abroad, 1937-1941," focuses on movies that reflected America's increasing uneasiness. Part two, "Waging War, 1942-1945," reveals that many movies made from 1942 through 1945 included at least some allusion to World War II.
"Richard Barsam has given us as comprehensive a study of the origins and development of the nonfiction mode in motion pictures as we are ever likely to have in one volume. He draws on all the major written sources and many which are little known, and he shares with us many eloquent descriptions of the films themselves, giving us a valuable textbook." --Richard Dyer MacCann "... superb work... " --Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television
This book, first published in 1983, brings together leading world experts on film and radio propaganda in a study which deals with each of the major powers as well as several under occupation. By examining each nations’ propaganda content and comparing its various strands of output designed for different audiences, the historian is provided with an important source of a nation’s official self-image. Total war forced governments to formulate goals consistent with the received national ideology in order to support the war effort. To this extent, much of the domestic propaganda was directed towards stimulating the population to make sacrifices with promise of a new world if the peace were won.
