Hollywood's World War I: Motion Picture Images

Hollywood's World War I. This war may have been the most important event of the early 20th century: it shelled the Victorian synthesis and decimated a lost generation. At first, the motion picture industry avoided the conflict but then discovered that both ground warriors and aviators fascinated the public in an era when motion picture attendance was on the rise. The first wave of films including The Big Parade (1925) and What Price Glory? (1926) focused on the epic grandeur of the struggle, finding nobility even in the suffering. The screen interpretation shifted soon after, as All Quiet on the Western Front and Hell's Angels (1930) stressed agony and futility. Yet when another war became imminent in the late 1930s, Hollywood responded with productions that praised service in arms-The Fighting 69th (1940) and Sergeant York (1941). Hollywood, the BBC and PBS stay close to the topic, as indicated by the eight-part series titled The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century, broadcast during the fall of 1996. In this study of feature films and documentaries, Hollywood's World War I traces America's changing views over five decades, as filmmakers have focused on a crisis that still reverberates in our civic and spiritual lives.