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from being only slightly removed from glory mongering propoganda, the war film has now claimed a position as one of the most important genres of modern cinema, writes alexander house unday afternoons. Dull time really. Nothing to do except wait for that roast dinner to be digested and read the umpteen sections of the Sunday Papers. And, of course, watch the obligatory Sunday Afternoon War Film. Most of the films shown in the Sunday afternoon slot were made in the decades immediately following the Second World War, before the genre died out in the 1980's. Most of these films dealt , with heroics and British victories - you never really saw much devoted to the German conquest of ' Western Europe in the spring of 1940. The films never really showed the true gruesome horror of conflict; civilians were rarely in evidence, the destruction was exciting rather than horrific, with seemingly unmanned pieces of military hardware going up in choreographed explosions. If people were killed it was in a clinical, emotionless fashion; hit by a bullet they fell over and still had the time to mutter something profound about Bligtlty. On top of all this the typical War film had as its key flaw the stereotyping of characters; you could guarantee there would always be an upper class officer, a cheeky cor blimey love a duck cockney sergeant, the farm boy who just wanted to go home to marry his school sweetheart and an invariably leather clad and ever so teenzy veenzy bit sadistic German officer. Then you always knew that any character who got married or engaged towards the beginning of the film would be dead by the end, and that somewhere along the line someone else would beg to be left behind to die a "hero's" death. "Leave me, I slow you down. • When Hollywood took over from Britain as the movie manufacturing capital of the world the emphasis
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changed, and gradually films about Britain's involvement in the war disappeared. In fact a new American controlled film is being made about the recovery of the code breaking Enigma machine, which was obtained by a British sub with a British crew. However the film has done away with any British involvement in the affair, replacing the British with a Yank sub and crew. Ap~arently Matthew McConnehey won the war. However in the main the stiff upper lipped British war film has been replaced by Hollywood with the more American concern of that cock up in Vietnam. This was when there occurred a profound change in
the way in which war was depicted at the cinema. Through the burgeoning mass media the public became more and more aware of the suffering caused by war, and particularly the destruction and terror caused to the native Vietnamese by often brutal US tactics. The fact that America was not being territorially threatened in the war meant that
there would always be an upper class officer, a cheeky cor blimey cockney and an ever so teenzy veenzy bit sadistic german officer the government could not justify blanket censorship, and coupled with the press coverage there ~ew a sizeable anti war movement. However it would be erroneus to believe that it was really Vietnam itself which caused such outrage. True the method of fighting, namely search and destroy was somewhat ill advised but it was the fact that this was the first war fought on television that manifested such anti war sentiment. After all, if film cameras had been present at Gaudalcanal during World War 2 there probably would have been several impassioned demonstrations. his anti war movement was in turn reflected in the kinds of films that Hollywood produced. There was still the odd gung ho AII-American flick, such as the awful Flight of the Intruder, but Platoon, Apocalypse Now et al reflected a strong criticism of the pro war movement. The final notable Vietnam film came in 1987 with the tragically late Stanley Kubrick's superlative Full Metal Jacket, a work which many see as the best of the genre. Mainly because it was the first ever war film to truly present to the public that, cliche aside, war is hell, all war is hell. War is dehumanising and life is lost for no reason. The infantry man's life or death will not win the war, any war, no matter where it is fought or when. Take the finale where an entire squadron of highly trained Gl's are wiped out almost entirely by a single female sniper in a desolate, non stategic building, merely because they got lost. No ground war gained, no enemy ammunition supplies destroyed. lt was then, perhaps because the demons of Vietnam were being laid to rest, that American cinema began to tum its attention back to World War Two. First Spielberg's Schindler's Ust, and then 1998's Saving Private Ryan, with its horrific opening sequence of the D-Day landings. The Thin Red Une quickly followed, and went much further than the loss of limbs or physical brutality that the first twenty eight minutes of SPR displayed. The Thin Red Une through its lyricism and elegance showed the loss of ones soul. The infantry men hold on in their minds to aboslutely anything,
however tenous, to keep them alive. Ben Chaplin, who plays Private Bell thinks only of his wife, through the fighting and through the long moments of waiting to fight. He creates in his mind some kind of fantasy marriage. This increased psychological element in the war film genre is reflected in The Trench, the first major British war film to be released for some years. The film concerns the fate of a group of ordinary British soldiers in the 48 hours before the Battle of the Somme in 1916, and ends with the inevitable, futile advance into the face of enemy fire. In the claustrophobic trench and the horror of 'going
over the top' there is no room for heroics; perhaps The Trench will be an even more honest portrayal of war than Saving Private Ryan, which could not resist a bit of Uncle Sa m flag flapping. lhis development of the war film, from British stiff upper lipped neo - propaganda to an expression of anti Vietnam sentiment to the 1990's take on the psychological effects of combat undoubtedly reflects the public's changing attitude towards conflict. Now the genre has moved on it can even serve an educational purpose; to demonstrate the full terror of violence between sovereign states to a generation that will hopefully never have to fight.
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