Month: November 2018

As one of the more typical war epics on this WWI films list, The Blue Max portrays a dramatic depiction of air combat set against the rapid shift of modern warfare in the early 20^th century. While we do not have the film on DVD, it is available online by searching the library catalog or directly through the Feature Films for Education database.

The film itself was an incredible feat of 1960s cinema. The producer, Christian Ferry, sought to create the greatest WWI air combat film of all time. Despite questions about historical accuracy, the film required the assembly of two miniature air forces at the cost of a quarter million dollars (roughly $2 million today), as the owners of the few surviving WWI war birds did not want to risk destruction for the film. Director Peter Jackson (of LotR trilogy fame), who is himself working on a stunning new WWI documentary utilizing colorized original footage, heralded the film as one of his top 6 best WWI films, and the very best in terms of the war in the air.

The film centers around Lt. Bruno Stachel, convincingly played by George Peppard, perhaps best known for his roles as Paul Varjak in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and as John ‘Hannibal’ Smith from the 1980s hit show the A-Team. Stachel, a former foot soldier on the Western front trenches, seeks to succeed as an officer in the German Army Air Service and secure the Blue Max, Germany’s highest medal for valor (requiring him to shoot down 20 aircraft). Seeking a more authentic experience, amazingly, George Peppard even learned to fly for his performance

and did some of his own flying in his role (though not the famed and dangerous flight under a bridge).

Stachel is seen as middle-class by the rest of the officer pilots, and alienates himself, sometimes to the detriment of his fellow team members. After his first combat kill goes unconfirmed, Stachel appears almost on a fanatical mission to prove its veracity and gain the upperhand in his quest for glory. Eventually, Stachel’s actions put him in conflict with his commanding officer, Hautpmann Otto Heidemann, an aristocratic man who still clings fervently to a belief in chivalry and German customs of war, as well as, Willi von Klugermann, a capable but competitive pilot in the same air unit. Ultimately, the competition between Stachel and Klugermann leads to the latter’s death, and Stachel arrogantly takes credit for the others kills. The same arrogance leads Stachel to seduce Kaeti, the wife of General Count von Klugermann (played by James Mason of North by Northwest fame). Stachel’s affair included a rather risqué scene, for the 1960s, from the first Bond girl, Ursula Andres, but also to Stachel’s downfall once he scorns her advances in favor of his love of combat flying.

The film culminates as Stachel is sent to Berlin to receive his Blue Max, despite the continued protestations of Heidemann. Ultimately, at Kaeti’s instigation, an investigation is opened into Stachel’s false claims of victory. It dawns on Klugermann that his wife had betrayed both him and Stachel. Seeking to avoid a scandal and save his own career, Klugermann orders Stachel to test a faulty “death trap” monoplane. Betrayed by his superior, Stachel’s plane breaks up and explodes onto the ground. Afterwhich the General rubber-stamps Stachel’s personnel files, saying “Give this to the Field Marshal. It is the personal file of a German officer…and a hero.”

The Blue Max ultimately plays out like the opposite of the aforementioned film Sergeant York from 1941. Stachel is as much a selfish and arrogant character as Sgt. York was selfless and modest. Yet, it is a certain heroism that binds the two soldiers. Being a fighter pilot during WWI was in itself a solitary, but incredibly dangerous job. Getting into the wood and cloth-based machines and squaring off against other pilots took an undeniable amount of skill, bravery, and confidence. The required bravado particularly lent itself to the celebration of individual air aces. Men like the Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen, and the other air aces of WWI, found fame above and beyond that of the many nameless soldiers who sloughed through the trenches. Despite the reality of the dog fights and and the daring nature of the aerial combat scenes, the film makes little effort to romanticize the air aces involved. Stachel is something of an anti-hero, who appears to have little regard for anything other than himself. Even his love interest is more of an obstacle to conquest, because of her relationship with Stachel’s nemesis, rather than a meaningful relationship. In a pivotal scene before receiving his long sought after medal, Stachel scolds her, saying, “Do you think I came all this way to run off with you to Zurich…this was about flying, not you.” In this way, The Blue Max says as much about the internal corruption of the military and the self-centered, dehumanizing nature of total war as the heroic nature of aerial combat in WWI.

Some five months before the United States entered WWII after Pearl Harbor, Sergeant York (DVD 10210), a biographical film about the life of decorated American solider Alvin C. York, was released. At its heart, the movie resonates a tale of an ordinary man who excels under extraordinary circumstances.

Most of the movie deals with the already adult York, a poor farmer who helps support his siblings and widowed mother in rural Tennessee. Remembered as an exceptional marksman, in his earlier years, York was just as notorious for his fighting and heavy drinking. Somewhat miraculously, a key scene in the film occurs when a drunk York is riding to exact revenge on a neighbor for a soured land deal. Suddenly, lightning strikes York’s rifle and knocks him off his mule. Similar to the Biblical conversion of Paul, York wanders into a nearby church and undergoes a religious conversion.

York does not actually appear as a uniformed soldier until about 1 hour 15 minutes into the movie. Thereafter, he is slowly converted from a conscientious objector to being free from self-doubt in the face of enemy fire. His actual deeds can be easily explored elsewhere, but ultimately, he single-handedly killed 20 enemies, while he and seven

others captured 4 officers and 128 German soldiers. His heroic feats immediately made him a national hero and something of a war celebrity. At the end of the movie, York is offered commercialization opportunities that amounted to some $250,000 ($3.5 million today). Yet the ending reflected York’s own humble origins, and simply requests to return home to Tennessee.

York’s feats from October 1918 initially received little press, until an article titled “The Second Elder Gives Battle” appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in April 1919. The article established the themes that dominated York’s legend, as well as those in the film: the mountaineer, his religious faith and skill with firearms, patriotic, plainspoken and unsophisticated, an uneducated man who “seems to do everything correctly by intuition.”

He lived out the rest of his days rather modestly, and continued to farm, hunt, attend church, and support local charities. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage on September 2, 1964 at age 76. Afterward, his widow sold his farm to the state of Tennessee where it continues as the Sgt. Alvin C. York State Historic Park.

The film itself was based on the diary York kept over the course of his stint in the military and the making of the film again reflected York’s humble virtues. He had earlier refused several attempts to turn his story into a film, but seeking to open an interdenominational Bible school, he relented and negotiated the film contract himself. Despite a few isolationists decrying the film as propaganda, Sergeant York received 11 Oscar nominations and was a huge success with audiences. It became the highest grossing film of 1941, and earned Gary Cooper the first of his two Best Actor Oscar awards.

In terms of all the stories and films about WWI, Sergeant York stands somewhat apart. It is not a story about the devastation in the trenches, mass violence, or total war. Despite the underlying religious nature of York’s film experience, in many of these respects, Sergeant York reflects an aspect of WWI film historiography that sometimes receives less attention: that of a generally true story of an individual war hero. This also all occurred at a time when the American public needed further confirmation of U.S. involvement in WWI. Later, he reflected somewhat critically, “I can’t see that we did any good. There’s as much trouble now as there was when we were over there. I think the slogan ‘A war to end war.’ is all wrong.” Yet, York remarkably seemed to live his life the same way he approached his war fame, not completely proud of what he did, but he recognized it had to be done.

 

Ok, let’s start out by acknowledging that Johnny Got His Gun (DVD 5654) is probably one of the most subtly terrifying movies that exists and is an incredibly powerful testament to the individual ravages of war. As the rather graphic trailer aptly explains, it is not the story of the millions that have died, but of one man who survived.

Based on the 1938 anti-war novel of the same name by Dalton Trumbo (who also directed the film), the story is told through the character Joe Bonham, a naïve but well-meaning U.S. volunteer who is severely injured by an artillery shell during World War I.

I had read the book once through a short-lived book club in college, but like many people growing up in the 1990s and 2000s, I was first aware of the movie through the Metallica music video for One, which features clips from the film throughout. Interestingly enough, Metallica currently owns all rights to the film as they got tired of having to pay royalties every time the video aired.

The film begins as brutally as any metal video, as three hooded and masked doctors peer over the injured Bonham as he awakens in a hospital bed, where he has lost his arms, legs, and face (including his eyes, ears, teeth, and tongue). Tragically, his mind continues to perfectly function. Somewhat thankfully, the audience is never shown his horrific injuries, and Bonham always appears in his hospital bed covered with gauze or a cloth mask. As his mind begins to gradually function, the audience is subjected to much happier flashbacks of his time with an early love, his memories of his father and mother, and his comradery with other soldiers before his injury.

Several aspects make the film devastatingly poignant and outright psychologically disturbing:

First, is the fact that no one else realizes Bonham’s mind is functioning normally. It is assumed that he is basically brain dead, and he is being kept alive primarily for medical research. Second, Bonham only slowly comes to realize the extent of his injuries. It begins with noticing he cannot move his limbs, and silently wails at the doctors for removing his arms and legs. Later, it suddenly dawns on him that his whole face has been “scooped out.” He silently screams “Oh Jesus Christ, it’s me and I’m alive.” The scene slowly fades to black as Bonham’s anguish of not wanting to live in such a state echoes across the screen in a deliriously hazy view of heaven. Likewise, the happy flashbacks are cut with more depressing, fantastical drug induced visions of heaven and a magic Jesus, superbly played by a young Donald Sutherland. Finally, when the medical staff realize that Bonham’s mind continues to function, his pleas in Morse code of “Kill me, Kill me” are ignored. Just as one nurse fails at cutting off his breathing tube, a knowing doctor sedates Bonham and then turns off the lights before leaving the room. The final scene has Bonham left in the dark, slowly fading into a drug induced slumber repeating “S.O.S. Help me.”

Chilling anti-war material to say the least.

Now as a whole, Johnny Got His Gun is probably not the most memorable of WWI films. It has a distinct lack of war action and was written with a very specific anti-war aim. The film, also thankfully, was not based on a real-life case, but was supposedly inspired by an article Trumbo read about a Canadian WWI veteran who had lost his arms and legs. Published in 1940, just after the declaration of war in Europe, the pacifist novel became something of a rallying point for both the political left (of which Trumbo was an increasingly ardent member), and right-wing isolationists before the full discovery of the Holocaust.

Ultimately, the anti-war message almost overshadows any aspect of Johnny got his Gun as a WWI film per se. If the WWI footage from the credits was replaced with any other war footage, the film could equally serve as a warning about the devastation of any war and individual suffering of its victims, just as Joe Bonham’s drift between reality and fantasy correspond to the myth and realities of any war.

Today’s entry in WWI on Film isn’t one film. It’s a collection of much shorter films. If you’re an AU student, you can access 20^th century film and newsreel clips from the WPA Library and British Pathe. Some of these clips are from WWI, and are basic black-and-white motion pictures. Of course, they don’t have sound, but it’s fascinating to catch a glimpse of the WWI era.

There are dozens of clips that you can explore, but I wanted to focus on one in particular: an animated short from British Pathe. In the short, the German Kaiser steps onto a balcony (not-so-subtly labeled “Germany”), and gazes up at a smiling moon. The moon’s smile immediately begins to transform into a smirk, and as the Kaiser gazes up, new stars appear in the sky. As the Kaiser watches with growing horror, the stars multiply, and the streaks of moonlit clouds form themselves into stripes, until the night sky looks like an American flag. Just after the stripes morph into bayoneted guns, the Kaiser cowers in fear. A gun shell comes soaring through the air, hitting his balcony and causing a massive explosion. When the smoke clears, the balcony and the Kaiser are gone, and the moon is laughing.

This animated short interests me for a couple of reasons. For one, it’s an early example of an animated film, but it doesn’t feel much like a modern animated film. Instead, it looks like a political cartoon set to motion. The unsubtle symbolism is there, as are the exaggerated reactions.

Its target audience is also different from modern day animation. Animated feature films in the US tend to be marketed towards young children, while this short is clearly marketed to all ages. It’s meant to prove a point, to provide hope, and to make an enemy laughable.

What also strikes me is how the United States is portrayed. While no American is ever shown on frame, the national flag, a potent symbol, saturates the sky like an omen. A bad omen for Germany, yes, but a good omen for Britain and its allies. The entrance of the US into the war meant an injection of fresh troops and other resources (like guns and shells) for Britain and France, which sorely needed them. This short is meant to send a message to British viewers—victory is in sight, now that the Americans are here.

While I can’t link directly to the video due to copyright restrictions, you can find this film by searching “Animated Film Depicts the U.S. Entry into World War I ca. 1917” in the AU Library catalog.

Westfront 1918 (DVD 16017)is one of Media Services’ newest acquisitions, but it’s one of the oldest films we’re reviewing for this series. A contemporary of All Quiet on the Western Front, Westfront explores many of the same themes, like the camaraderie between soldiers and alienation from the home front. Like All Quiet, Westfront is based on a memoir/novel by a German veteran. Unlike the American-produced All Quiet, however, Westfront is a purely German production. The movie was actually G.W. Pabsts’ first ‘talkie,’ but Westfront is remarkable for its relative lack of dialogue. Instead, Pabst relies on vocal silence, and the environmental noises of war.

The film follows four German soldiers on the Western Front in the final days of the war. We get a sense that a lot has happened before the movie begins. The men in the company joke and make fun of each other like old friends, they all look haggard, and their uniforms are worn, dirty, and messy. Because we know the context, we can guess about what these men have seen together, but we can only guess. This allows the audience to do two things. First, it lets us fill in the gaps for ourselves. We can imagine something infinitely worse than what they’ve actually experienced, or something easier. Either way, we’ll probably never guess the truth. This, in turn, serves to isolate the men from the audience. Pabst is effectively putting us in the shoes of the men’s families back home, a theme which is explored later in the film.

We’re further isolated from the men because only one of them, Karl, is ever named. The others are simply “the Lieutenant,” “the Bavarian,” and “the Student.” We really only know Karl’s name because he gets home leave halfway through the movie, and that’s how his mother and wife refer to him. Again, the viewer can guess about the men’s lives before the war, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter. They are there on the front, and that’s all that matters.

This reticence in details extends to the film’s dialogue. The men don’t need words to communicate. Silence or significant looks work just as well, and they often convey more than mere words could. Again, this binds the men together and excludes the audience, but it also allows their situation to speak for itself. The most common sound in Westfront is not the human voice, but explosions from incoming shells. Nearly every shot features an explosion, or at least the sounds of explosions if the men are in a dugout or behind the lines. The men take precautions, and do what they can to avoid the fire, but they have by and large ceased to be afraid. Sure, they drop to the ground when they hear a shell coming towards them, but you get the feeling that it’s more a matter of procedure than out of terror or fear.

Westfront 1918 reflects the realities of the Western front, and average soldiers’ experiences, without fanfare and without moralizing overtones. While the film definitely has an anti-war agenda, it isn’t overt. Instead, it creeps up on you, and leaves you thinking about war’s implications long after the movie ends.

Let me make a few things clear. Yes, I know that Wonder Woman (DVD 14777) is completely, 100% fictional. I know that an ancient demi-goddess didn’t end the war. So, why am I including Wonder Woman in this series about World War I movies? First, this is one of maybe two WWI movies which feature a woman as the main character. If Hollywood refuses to give me the feminist and historically accurate war films I deserve, then I will claim whatever movie I can get. Second, Wonder Woman hits trope after trope indicative of WWI movies—and then subverts them all.

A common theme seen in WWI movies—including movies we’ve written about in this blog series—is the loss of innocence. A young man goes off to fight a war for his country, sure of himself and in his convictions. After reaching the front, he loses his convictions, his purpose, his sense of self, and his faith in humanity. In Wonder Woman, Diana embarks on this same journey. The war comes to Themiscyra (just as the war came to England and Germany and Austria and France and Russia), and Diana, full of righteous fervor, defies her mother’s wishes and joins the fight. She manages to hold on to her ideals and her sense of self until the climax of the film, during her battle with Ares. By the standard of every WWI movie, something essential and important within Diana should die. And yes, her love interest dies, but Diana’s faith in humanity remains unshaken. In fact, it even grows stronger.

The second WWI trope Wonder Woman adopts is the belief, adopted by filmmakers and historians alike, that common men fought and died in someone else’s war. Usually, when we see this trope in film and in war memoirs, the young foot soldier feels that he’s sent to die because of a politician’s petty grievance. This sense of a manufactured conflict is evident in Wonder Woman, but instead of ascribing blame to politicians, the filmmakers put the lion’s share of the blame on Ares, the god of war. When Diana slays Ares, generals and privates alike emerge from a war-clouded haze, and they rejoice in their unclouded vision and new sense of free will.

Wonder Woman covers too many tropes to discuss in this short post, but I do want to spend some time on one last one: No Man’s Land. Usually, films linger on No Man’s Land as a blighted symbol of lost hope, and of death and meaningless destruction. In Wonder Woman, Diana just… charges across it. It may be No Man’s Land, but Diana is no man. She’s not the cautious Steve Trevor, nor one of the broken men huddled in the trenches. She’s untainted by the true horror and pain of the war, and buoyed by her faith in humanity and her sense of right and wrong.

In most WWI films, No Man’s Land is usually where those kind of ideals go to die. It’s ultimately impassable, because the soldiers depicted have lost the will to fight, the will to live, and even themselves. Crucially, the events that trigger a similar transformation in Diana do not occur until well after she successfully charges No Man’s Land. I have to wonder, would she have been able perform the same feat after her confrontation with Ludendorff?

So we’ve established that Wonder Woman hits all the right tropes for a World War I movie, but we’ve also established that it subverts them.  You could read this a couple of different ways. You could argue that attributing the war to Ares removes blame from people who did contribute to the war’s beginning and continuation. There’s still a flourishing debate about who actually shoulders blame for the war, and it’s convenient to ascribe blame to something totally beyond human control. A less generous reading of the film could argue that by shifting the blame to a god, and the responsibility of ending to war to a demi-goddess, Wonder Woman dismisses the role ordinary mortals played, and can play, in perpetuating and ending violence.

I dn’t think the movie should be read that way. Ultimately, I see Wonder Woman as a movie about coming of age in the midst of a worldwide calamity. This would make the film similar to movies like All Quiet on the Western Front or Testament of Youth. Yes, this generational loss of innocence is reflected in the journey of a mythical demi-goddess, but that doesn’t make the war, or the people who lived through it or died in it, any less real.

How does one make a war movie? Do you show the blood, the guts? Is the movie about glorifying the war heroes that arise from battle, shaken but unbroken? Is it about the horrors of war and the depths that humanity is willing to plunge? Filmmakers have long had to grapple with questions like these when making war movies. Before World War One, it was perhaps easier to glamorize war and its heroics.

But WWI was a monumental, earth-shaking, reality-shattering war. It saw the first use of trench warfare and chemical warfare, as well as the introduction of tanks, planes, and submarines into major battles. WWI was the first war to have been fought with motion picture cameras capturing its true horrors.

Along with the changes in technology and warfare, WWI brought changes in how war is portrayed on the silver screen. Men were coming back shell shocked – we know now that what they were suffering from PTSD. People had seen firsthand that war was not a fun romp through Europe. It had been hell. How, then, should it be portrayed in movies?

For Jean Renoir, co-writer and director of La Grande Illusion (DVD 213), the best way to portray WWI was to not show any battles at all.

La Grande Illusion premiered in 1937, to much praise in France. An estimated 12 million tickets were sold in France. It reached similar heights in the United States, becoming the first foreign language film to be nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture. FDR declared that “all the democracies in the world must see this film.”[i] Nazi Germany declared it “Cinematic Public Enemy no. 1.” More than 80 years since its release, it still appears on lists of the greatest films ever made. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 97%.

Why is a war movie that shows no war held to such acclaim? Part of its appeal is due to the time when the film was made. Almost 20 years had passed since the guns were laid down at the end of World War One. The war was not fresh in the minds of many. Instead, many were focused on the economic recession gripping the world: the Great Depression had hit America hard, and was taking many European countries down with it. Germany, in particular, was struggling. Nazis had come to power. The world was on the precipice of war again. Two years later the world would plunge into World War Two. WWI was called the “War to End All Wars,” but barely 20 years separates it from an even larger, even bloodier, even more horrific war.

La Grande Illusion was a film about a group of men whose bond transcended the radical national identities that now dictated the world. Indeed, Renoir used the film as a lens through which he explored European culture before the rise of fascism.

Renoir very purposefully left the fighting out of La Grande Illusion. By 1937, every Frenchmen understood the horrors of WWI. He focused the film on a group of French soldiers being held in a German prisoner-of-war camp.  He wanted to rectify the fact that he had seen only one film – All Quiet on the Western Front – “giving a true picture of the men who did the fighting.”^[ii] By focusing on the men instead of the battles, Renoir was able to examine the universal experience of men who fought in WWI. The class dynamics and prejudices that play out through the prisoners and guards rang true for many who saw the film when it premiered. There is little animosity between the French soldiers and the German soldiers: ultimately, they all know that the war is futile, and are not the fanatic nationalists of WWII. Indeed, many of the nations who fought against each other during WWI had previously been allies or connected through royal families.

Through La Grande Illusion, Renoir was able to paint an accurate picture both of the culture of the time as well as the experiences of men who fought. Ultimately, La Grande Illusion is about the empty frivolousness of WWI. The title in itself is in reference to both the idea that the war would end all wars, as well as the idea that the war was for a heroic higher purpose. These are the grand illusions that swept men into the war, and these are the grand illusions that the movie proves are not true.

La Grande Illusion is entirely unlike other war movies, and this is perhaps why it resonates with audiences even through generations with no memory of WWI.

— Written by Melissa Galvin, Media Services Student Assistant

^[i] http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/76799/Grand-Illusion/articles.html

[ii] https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/movies/renoirs-vision-for-a-united-europe-in-grand-illusion.html

I’ve seen many WWI films in my time, even before we started this blog series, but Joyeux Noel is my stand-out favorite. Like All Quiet on the Western Front, it highlights what united the combatants, rather than what divided them. Joyeux Noel is certainly much more pointed than All Quiet, but it has the benefit of ninety years of hindsight, and the benefit of years of lasting peace.

Joyeux Noel, released in 2005, follows three different units in their trenches over Christmas 1914 (“joyeux noel” means “merry Christmas” in French). These three units are Scottish, French, and German, and the film spends an equal amount of time with each unit, never favoring one over the other. There’s not even a single language used—the Scots speak English, the French speak French, and the Germans speak German. As the film shows, even these differences in language can be overcome, because Christmas, apparently, is a language all Western Europeans speak.

In the days leading up to Christmas Eve, the three different units battle each other. Men are killed on both sides, and each suspect the other side of attacking on Christmas Eve or Christmas itself. Sitting in their cold trenches, the Scots begin to play traditional songs on their bagpipes. While the French enjoy a Christmas Eve meal and listen, a German private named Sprink, a former Opera tenor, begins to sing “Silent Night” (in German), and one of the bagpipers accompanies him. The two then go back and forth, singing and playing Christmas songs common to both countries. Sprink eventually climbs out of his trench and strides into No Man’s Land, carrying a Christmas tree and belting “O Come All Ye Faithful.” He sets the tree down as an offering, and the three commanding officers join him and agree to a temporary ceasefire.

What follows is basically a Christmas party, followed by a mass. The soldiers meet in No Man’s Land with food and alcohol, and the officers sit together, relieved but also sad. There’s a soccer game (the Germans win), and Father Palmer, the Scottish priest, celebrates a mass. All three units are mostly Catholic, and all are moved and briefly united in their shared faith. All in all, the ceasefire continues for several days, and once hostilities recommence, the units on both sides find it impossible to fight each other.

These Christmas ceasefires did occur, though apparently only in 1914. Joyeux Noel makes us question: How could the war have continued if the different sides participated in these ceasefires? The film’s Christmas truce forced all of the men to acknowledge their supposed enemies as real people, and not an abstract enemy, so how could men in similar situations go back to shooting each other once the truces ended?

In Joyeux Noel’s highly fictionalized depiction of these truces, the fighting goes on because the new comrades are separated. The Scottish unit is disbanded, the French unit is sent to Verdun, and the German unit is shipped to the Eastern Front. In order for the war to continue, in order for a victory, the militaries and governments on both sides cannot allow their soldiers to see the enemy as their friends, or even fellow men.

The actual reasons why fighting continued after the truces are more complicated, but Joyeux Noel doesn’t delve any deeper. It leaves us with a simple explanation, and a little heartbreak over the futility of the units’ situation. It is in no way a feel-good Christmas movie, and it’s definitely not a victorious war movie.  In a way, it’s a film tailor-made for the early age of the European Union. Joyeux Noel argues that more binds the warring European countries than divides them, and that what divides exist are surmountable. It’s a nice idea, but one that could only truly be realized ninety years and two world wars later.