Movies During War Years

War provides the perfect scenario for action films. The very situation of war calls for action scenes like air dogfights, submarine warfare, and hand-to-hand combat. In a war-based action movie, there are also relationship-based plots such as love, forced separation, deep friendship, sacrifice, and loyalty. Hate and inhumanity are also relationship-based plots that war movies draw on.

There is no doubt that General Sherman was right when he said "war is hell." But war is also the stuff of which great movies are made. A war scenario allows heroes to be really heroic and villains to be truly evil. The extremes of human behavior and human emotions become the
accepted norm in action war movies.

War-based movies are the ultimate in the "us" (good guys) against "them" (bad guys) flag-waving, morale-building, national pride-inspiring tool. (Some call this propaganda — but only when the other side uses a movie as a tool.)

The first war movie was only a minute and a half long. "Tearing Down the Flag" was made in 1898 and showed the "staged" (and fictitious) version of American troops seizing a Spanish government installation in Havana, removing the foreign flag, and replacing it with the Stars and Stripes.

Pro-war silent movies were made before America entered World War I showing what might happen if we didn't get involved. "The Battle Cry of Peace," released in 1915 with Norma Talmadge; "Over the Top," released in 1918; and the animated short "The Sinking of the Lusitania," also released in 1918, were pro-war films that were all promoting America going to war.

These films did something even more important and more far-reaching than they were intended to do. They demonstrated the power of motion pictures to control or at least influence public opinion. That is an awesome responsibility that, unfortunately, Hollywood has never taken seriously enough.