‘Snapshots’: Local Cinema Cultures in the Great War (original) (raw)
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The Great War broke out at the moment that the film industry at all levels, production, distribution and exhibition was becoming established. Here the attention is on the local cinema cultures of three spaces: Louvain in Belgium, Southampton in England, and Stevens Point, Wisconsin, in the United States. The areas share marked differences: Louvain suffered considerably, including direct damage to its buildings, reprisal executions of its citizens and German occupation for the four years of the war; Southampton witnessed the parade of war through its role as the main embarkation point for British troops, as well as suffering the loss in unprecedented number of casualties which the British people endured; and Stevens Point was different again in that the war directly touched the local community, with its considerable German and Polish immigrant population, as the politics of the nation shifted from isolation to engagement. These were all factors in the exhibition strategies of local cinema exhibitors who negotiated new audiences. The article draws out similarities and differences in these areas to argue that the war’s impact on particular local cultures was significant in the establishment of cinema’s social function within each community.
The Great War in American and British Cinema, 1918–1938
Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media, 2020
Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media publishes original, high quality research into the cultures of communication from the middle ages to the present day. The series explores the variety of subjects and disciplinary approaches that characterize this vibrant field of enquiry. The series will help shape current interpretations not only of the media, in all its forms, but also of the powerful relationship between the media and politics, society, and the economy.
Theaters of Occupation: Hollywood and the Re-education of Postwar German_Introduction.pdf
University of Minnesota Press, 2008 Abstract: In a rigorous analysis of the American occupation of postwar Germany and the military’s use of “soft power,” Jennifer Fay considers how Hollywood films, including Ninotchka, Gaslight, and Stagecoach, influenced German culture and cinema. Theaters of Occupation reveals how Germans responded to these education efforts and offers new insights about American exceptionalism and virtual democracy at the dawn of the Cold War. REVIEWS: "Jennifer Fay offers subtle and sophisticated readings of select films, amply demonstrating how self-contradictory and problematic the American concept of democratic re-education can be in the sphere of culture." --Thomas Elsaesser, author of European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood. "Jennifer Fay, one of the more skillful practitioners of cultural studies, has produced a work of film history that should vindicate those sympathetic to new approaches to occupation regimes . . . . This work may even win over some traditionalists at odds with the cultural turn. They will find it accessible and full of insights into the culture of occupation, whether in postwar Germany or contemporary Iraq, as she probes not just routines of obedience but also ruses of resistance." --The Journal of American History. "With great enthusiasm and an innovative approach, [Jennifer Fay] maps the attempt to produce in occupied Germany a democratic pedagogy through the use of cinematic culture, while simultaneously giving an intriguing insight to both German and American film production during the 1940s and 1950s."--Film International. "Fay contributes new perspectives with her careful attention to film form and narration, her nuanced approach to the question of spectatorship, and her critique of the psychocultural and political assumptions driving film policy, if not the politics of Occupation as a whole." --H Soz U Kult [H-NET]. "Fay’s volume is excellent—well researched, written and argued—and she provides the first scholarship to date on at least six of the films analyzed. Theaters of Occupation adds an essential piece to the field of transnational cinema."—German Quarterly Book Reviews. "Jennifer Fay has produced an innovative, superbly researched, and engagingly written book on U.S.-led reorientation politics in the aftermath of World War II." —The Historical Journal of Radio, Television and Film. "What’s most striking about Fay’s analysis is the facility with which she organizes insights drawn from a diverse array of disciplines—literary criticism, literary theory, film studies, political theory and history—into a coherent whole. It’s a very rich tapestry that she weaves."—Postmodern Culture. "A fascinating study of cultural policy in the postwar U.S. zone of occupation."—Monatshefte. "Theaters of Occupation is a well-written, well-researched, interdisciplinary study on the intersections between nationalism, identity, film and culture. It is an excellent read, one which scholars from a variety of disciplines, including media, cultural studies, film, international relations, political science, history, and German and American studies, will likely find enjoyable, interesting and useful."— International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics.
The Great War: Cinema, Propaganda, and The Emancipation of Film Language
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2017
The relation between war and cinema, propaganda and cinema is a most intriguing area, located at the intersection of media studies, history and film aesthetics. A truly tragic moment in human history, the First World War was also the first to be fought before film cameras. And while in the field, airborne reconnaissance became cinematic (Virilio), domestic propaganda occupied the screen of the newly emergent national cinemas, only to see its lucid message challenged and even subverted by the fast-evolving language of cinema. Part one of this paper looks at three non-fiction films, released in 1916: Battle of Somme, With Our Heroes at the Somme (Bei unseren Helden an der Somme) and Battle of Somme (La Bataille de la Somme), as paradigmatic propaganda takes on the eponymous historical battle from British, German and French points of view. Part two analyses two war-time Hollywood melodramas, David Wark Griffith’s Hearts of the World (1918) and Allen Holubar’s The Heart of Humanity (1919), and explains the longevity of the former with the powerful “text effect” of the authentic wartime footage included. Thus, while these WWI propaganda works do validate Virilio’s ideas of the integral connections between technology, war and cinema, and between cinema and propaganda, they also herald the emancipation of post WWI film language.
Belgisch tijdschrift Nieuwste geschiedenis , 2023
During the First World War, the occupation of Belgium was characterized by destroyed towns and villages, plunder, and an impoverished population consumed by a hatred towards the German invader. Many Belgian families feared the fate of "their boys" on the Yser front. In these dif cult times, one of the few bright spots in the daily life of the mainly urban population was found in cinema-halls and lm screenings. The German occupying government both supported and encouraged cinema screenings and surprisingly, screenings of prewar lms from countries that Germany was at war with, such as France, were allowed. In parallel, the German General-Governor ruling Belgium did his utmost to supply the lm market with new (German and Danish) films It was a clear attempt to construct a degree of goodwill with Belgians in their own occupied country, cautiously introducing only a limited number of films that could be seen as pure propaganda. This article highlights an unknown but fascinating aspect of German cultural policy during their occupation of Belgium.
Reading the geographies of post-war British film culture through the reception of French film
New Review of Film and Television Studies, 2013
This article examines the ways in which British specialist film culture anticipated and received the resumed supply of French films at the end of the Second World War. It finds that in serious film journalism and within the rapidly expanding film society movement, new French cinema was the focus of at least as much British attention as Italian neo-realism-the European cinema more famously associated with the era. The article posits that a number of factors, including anti-Americanism, combined to position the delayed wartime and immediate postwar French releases as a site of impossible expectations and subsequent interpretative difficulty for British cinephiles. In particular, through a case study of the local mediation of French cinema in the English city of Nottingham, this article considers the role of published criticism for setting the local viewing frame within the provincial film society movement. By tracing the tensions surrounding the circulation of film prints, information and opinion relating to these prestigious cultural imports, it becomes possible to gain greater insight into both the range of nationally specific meanings attributed to the imported films and the geographic and cultural inequalities at work within the film culture of the country of reception.
2017
Films about the First World War began to attract academic attention towards the end of the 1980s, starting with the exploration of films from early in the war years. There are only anecdotal accounts and explorations of the movies from this period up until the present. A more thorough investigation of documentary films was conducted by Uli Jung and Wolfgang Mühl-Benninghaus in their three-volume edition exploring German Documentary Films from 1895 to 1945. This article traces the ultimately unsuccessful efforts of the German side to use films as a means of propaganda both at home and abroad. This article also explores how the establishment of the Universum Film AG (UFA) allowed the people of the empire to have an influence, even during the war, upon the structure and content of the film industry in postwar Germany.
World War 2 films and propaganda on the home front
This essay looks at three WW2 films, Battle of the Bulge, Only Old Men Are Going to Battle, and The Fighting Sullivans to analyze how different art forms can be used as by artists and the government as propaganda, and the resulting effects on the home front.