Wartime Cinema: Cinema of the late 1930s-1940s

1. Wartime Cinema: Cinema of the late 1930s-1940s

2. Wartime Hollywood • Beginning in September 1941, a Senate subcommittee launched an investigation into whether Hollywood was campaigning to bring the United States into World War II by inserting pro-British and pro-interventionist messages in its films. • Found NOT TRUE • At first, because Hollywood was dependent on the European market for revenue, they didn’t want to offend foreign audiences and didn’t address the war much at all. • After Pearl Harbor, however, Hollywood quickly enlisted in the war cause.

3. Hollywood Contributions • Greatest contribution to the war effort was morale. • Many of the movies produced during the war were patriotic rallying cries giving Americans a sense of national purpose. • Combat films of the war years emphasized patriotism, group effort, and the value of individual sacrifices for a larger cause. • They portrayed World War II as a peoples' war • Typically featuring a group of men from diverse ethnic backgrounds who are thrown together, tested on the battlefield, and molded into a dedicated fighting unit. • Also featured women characters playing an active role in the war by serving as combat nurses, riveters, welders, and long-suffering mothers who kept the home fires burning. • Even cartoons, like Bugs Bunny "Nips the Nips," contributed to morale.

4. Contributions cont. • Also, Hollywood enlisted! • Leading directors like Frank Capra, John Ford, and John Huston enlisted and made documentaries to explain, "why we fight" and to offer civilians an idea of what actual combat looked like. • Frank Capra’s doc Why We Fight had a huge impact on it’s viewers. • In less than a year, 12 percent of all film industry employees entered the armed forces, including Clark Gable, Henry Fonda, and Jimmy Stewart. • By the war's end, one-quarter of Hollywood's male employees were in uniform.

5. Fear of Censorship • Hollywood feared that the industry would be subject to strong government censorship. • Less than two weeks after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt declared the movie industry could make "a very useful contribution" to the war effort. But, "The motion picture industry must remain free . . . I want no censorship.” • Convinced that movies could contribute to national morale, but fearing outright censorship, federal government established two agencies within the Office of War Information (OWI) in 1942 to supervise the film industry: • The Bureau of Motion Pictures, which produced educational films and reviewed scripts submitted by the studios • The Bureau of Censorship, which oversaw film exports.

6. OWI and the Bureau of Motion Pictures • OWI officials didn’t like Hollywood movies- "escapist and delusive." • To encourage the industry to provide more acceptable films, the Bureau of Motion Pictures issued "The Government Information Manual for the Motion Picture." • This manual suggested that before producing a film, moviemakers consider the question: "Will this picture help to win the war?" • It also asked the studios to inject images of "people making small sacrifices for victory - making them voluntarily, cheerfully, and because of the people's own sense of responsibility.” • The Bureau evaluated individual film scripts to assess how they depicted war aims, the American military, the enemy, the allies, and the home front. • The Bureau of Motion Pictures died out in the spring of 1943--government monitoring of the film industry shifted to the Office of Censorship. • This agency prohibited the export of films that showed racial discrimination, depicted Americans as single-handedly winning the war, or painted our allies as imperialists.

7. Outcomes • The war years proved to be highly profitable for the movie industry. Spurred by shortages of gasoline and tires, as well as the appeal of newsreels, the war boosted movie attendance to near-record levels of 90 million a week.

8. Hollywood's World War II • Ninety million Americans went to the movies every week during World War II. • The shows began with a newsreel. The audience saw Hitler dancing a jig or Pearl Harbor engulfed in flames or Roosevelt meeting with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. A cartoon followed, perhaps Bugs Bunny "Nipping the Nips." Then came the main attraction…

9. WWII and the Combat Film • Of the many kinds of films that Hollywood produced during World War II to rally the public behind the war effort, perhaps the most distinctive was the combat film. • Many of our deepest images of war's glory and ugliness come from World War II combat films. • They helped shape our very conceptions of courage, patriotism, and teamwork. • The wartime movies of World War II tended to be much more subtle and restrained than those made during the First World War. • WWI Films had focused on real or alleged enemy atrocities where Hollywood produced a more diverse response in World War II films • Casablanca, with its portrait of a Rick Blaine's gradual shift from self-centered detachment to active involvement in the Allied cause.

10. Combat film Style and Message • Almost documentary style, these films helped bring the war home, helped educate viewers in the reasons why we fought by depicting "democracy in action.” • Typically, these films focused on an small group of men involved in a life-or-death mission: struggling valiantly to hold an island or to attack a target deep behind enemy lines. • By focusing on a single isolated group, Hollywood showed the human meaning of war for individuals that the audience could identify with. • The group's makeup underscored the fact that this was a democratic war - a peoples' war - drawing upon every segment of society. • Individualism and cooperation both were necessary, according to these films, to preserve American freedoms. • The key crises in these films' plot tended not to come from the threats posed by enemy forces but rather from the arrival of an outsider - a coward - who threatens group cohesion and the men's ability to concentrate on the task at hand. The plot ultimately turns on the whether this outsider can be successfully integrated into the group and become a contributing member of the team.

11. Casablanca • Director: Michael Curtiz • Released: 1942 • Cast: • Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) • Ugarte(Peter Lorre) • Renault (Claude Rains) • IlsaLund (Ingrid Bergman) • Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid)

12. Background Information • Set in unoccupied Africa during the early days of World War II: An American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications. • Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) is a bitter, cynical American expatriate in Casablanca. He owns and runs "Rick's Café Américain", an upscale nightclub and gambling den that attracts a mixed clientele of Vichy French and Nazi officials, refugees and thieves. Rick professes to be neutral in all matters and unmoved by either side of the war…

13. The Quintessential 40s Film: Casablanca • The most subtle of all wartime propaganda films • Romantic story of self-sacrifice and heroism • Reflected the change in American view of WWII      • Rick reflected American neutrality with the famous line: "I stick my neck out for nobody.” But changes his attitude by the end of the film…

14. What we will focus on • Leitmotifs – how is music used to express emotion to the viewer? • How are setting and light/shadow used to express understanding to the viewer (ex: confinement/imprisonment)? • How is Ilsa (Ingmar Bergman) filmed in close-up? What effect does this have on the viewer’s understanding of her character? • Black/White color imagery • Theme of Self-sacrifice • Overtones of the war and patriotism