Author: M. Todd Bennett
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807835749
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 380
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Book Description
World War II coincided with cinema's golden age. Movies now considered classics were created at a time when all sides in the war were coming to realize the great power of popular films to motivate the masses. Through multinational research, One World,
Author: David Luhrssen
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219
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Book Description
World War II on Film examines the war through the lens of 12 films. The movies selected include productions made during World War II and in each succeeding decade, providing a sense of how different generations perceive the war. World War II on Film provides a succinct yet well-grounded appraisal of that war as seen through 12 representative films. The book separates fact from fiction, showing where the movies were accurate and where they departed from reality, and places them in the larger context of historical and social events. Each movie chosen represents a particular aspect of the conflict, including the air war over Europe, the condition of prisoners of war, Nazi atrocities, and the British evacuation at Dunkirk. Unlike most histories of Hollywood during World War II or the genre of war movies, World War II on Film examines in depth the relation between the depictions of events, beliefs, attitudes, and ways of life as seen on film with reality as documented by historians or recorded by journalists or eye-witnesses to the war. The volume will appeal to high school and college readers, as well as general interest readers and film buffs.
Author: John Whiteclay Chambers II
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199880115
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 208
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Book Description
The immediacy and perceived truth of the visual image, as well as film and television's ability to propel viewers back into the past, place the genre of the historical film in a special category. War films--including antiwar films--have established the prevailing public image of war in the twentieth century. For American audiences, the dominant image of trench warfare in World War I has been provided by feature films such as All Quiet on the Western Front and Paths of Glory. The image of combat in the Second World War has been shaped by films like Sands of Iwo Jima and The Longest Day. And despite claims for the alleged impact of widespread television coverage of the Vietnam War, it is actually films such as Apocalypse Now and Platoon which have provided the most powerful images of what is seen as the "reality" of that much disputed conflict. But to what degree does history written "with lightning," as Woodrow Wilson allegedly said, represent the reality of the past? To what extent is visual history an oversimplification, or even a distortion of the past? Exploring the relationship between moving images and the society and culture in which they were produced and received, World War II, Film, and History addresses the power these images have had in determining our perception and memories of war. Examining how the public memory of war in the twentieth century has often been created more by a manufactured past than a remembered one, a leading group of historians discusses films dating from the early 1930s through the early 1990s, created by filmmakers the world over, from the United States and Germany to Japan and the former Soviet Union. For example, Freda Freiberg explains how the inter-racial melodramatic Japanese feature film China Nights, in which a manly and protective Japanese naval officer falls in love with a beautiful young Chinese street waif and molds her into a cultured, submissive wife, proved enormously popular with wartime Japanese and helped justify the invasion of China in the minds of many Japanese viewers. Peter Paret assesses the historical accuracy of Kolberg as a depiction of an unsuccessful siege of that German city by a French Army in 1807, and explores how the film, released by Hitler's regime in January 1945, explicitly called for civilian sacrifice and last-ditch resistance. Stephen Ambrose contrasts what we know about the historical reality of the Allied D-Day landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944, with the 1962 release of The Longest Day, in which the major climactic moment in the film never happened at Normandy. Alice Kessler-Harris examines The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter, a 1982 film documentary about women defense workers on the American home front in World War II, emphasizing the degree to which the documentary's engaging main characters and its message of the need for fair and equal treatment for women resonates with many contemporary viewers. And Clement Alexander Price contrasts Men of Bronze, William Miles's fine documentary about black American soldiers who fought in France in World War I, with Liberators, the controversial documentary by Miles and Nina Rosenblum which incorrectly claimed that African-American troops liberated Holocaust survivors at Dachau in World War II. In today's visually-oriented world, powerful images, even images of images, are circulated in an eternal cycle, gaining increased acceptance through repetition. History becomes an endless loop, in which repeated images validate and reconfirm each other. Based on archival materials, many of which have become only recently available, World War II, Film, and History offers an informative and a disturbing look at the complex relationship between national myths and filmic memory, as well as the dangers of visual images being transformed into "reality."
Author: Virginia Lyman Lucas
Publisher: Page Publishing Inc
ISBN: 1646280296
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 163
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Book Description
As rich in history as World War II at the Movies, which commemorates in chronological order World War II major battles and pivotal events and captures the spirit of frontline heroes and strategist leaders, World War II at the Movies, Volume II, is as different in content and format. These compelling major motion picture films, blockbuster thrillers, and fascinating supplemental data elucidate and elaborate on top secret commando missions, challenges that wounded veterans faced adapting to civilian life with life-changing disabilities, and innovation, development, and advances in war weaponry technology, which led to the Allied victory over tyranny. You will find out: • whose naval career was depicted and portrayed by Cliff Robertson at the time he was a sitting president of the United States • who was the youngest World War II veteran (who enlisted in the Navy at the age of twelve) • who was the oldest World War II veteran (who died in December of 2018 at the age of 112) • which "lady" came to England's financial aid when they couldn't fund the spitfire's entry in the Schneider race (the winner of which would be awarded funds to further advance airplane design) • who invented Germany's enigma code machine
Author: M. Todd Bennett
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 0807837466
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384
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Book Description
World War II coincided with cinema's golden age. Movies now considered classics were created at a time when all sides in the war were coming to realize the great power of popular films to motivate the masses. Through multinational research, One World, Big Screen reveals how the Grand Alliance--Britain, China, the Soviet Union, and the United States--tapped Hollywood's impressive power to shrink the distance and bridge the differences that separated them. The Allies, M. Todd Bennett shows, strategically manipulated cinema in an effort to promote the idea that the United Nations was a family of nations joined by blood and affection. Bennett revisits Casablanca, Mrs. Miniver, Flying Tigers, and other familiar movies that, he argues, helped win the war and the peace by improving Allied solidarity and transforming the American worldview. Closely analyzing film, diplomatic correspondence, propagandists' logs, and movie studio records found in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the former Soviet Union, Bennett rethinks traditional scholarship on World War II diplomacy by examining the ways that Hollywood and the Allies worked together to prepare for and enact the war effort.
Author: John Whiteclay Chambers II Professor of History Rutgers University
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199728739
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 208
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Book Description
Author: Doris Milberg
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786455748
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 225
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Book Description
World War II has been an endlessly fertile film subject since the late 1930s-even before the United States entered combat. This sweeping study of Hollywood's depictions of the war, and of the motion picture industry during wartime, describes more than 450 films in roughly chronological order, while providing a historical perspective on the times and the events depicted. Included are such pictures as Casablanca, The Battle of Midway, Der Fuhrer's Face and Letters from Iwo Jima.
Author: Clayton R. Koppes
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520071612
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404
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Book Description
The little-explored story of how politics, propaganda, and profits were combined to create the drama, imagery and fantasy that was American film during World War II. 32 black-and-white photographs.
Author: Ralph Donald
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442277270
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 275
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Book Description
Frequently referred to as “the Greatest Generation,” Americans of the World War II era were influenced by Hollywood’s depictions of their nation, its role in world affairs, and the virtue of its involvement in the war. Stories of the bravery and heroism of the American military—as well as the moral and political threat posed by the enemy—filled movie screens across the country to garner passionate support for wartime policies. In Hollywood Enlists! Propaganda Films of World War II, Ralph Donald explores how the studios supported the war effort and helped shape the attitudes of an entire generation. Through films the studios appealed to the public’s sense of nationalism, demonized the enemy, and stressed that wartime sacrifices would result in triumph. The author contends that American films of the period used sophisticated, but often overlooked, strategies of propaganda to ideologically unite the country. While these strategies have long been associated with political speeches and writings during the war, little in-depth consideration has been given to their use in the era’s cinema. By examining major motion pictures—including Casablanca, The Flying Tigers, Mrs. Miniver, Sergeant York, They Were Expendable, and many others—Donald illustrates how various propaganda techniques aligned the nation’s entertainment with government aims. Hollywood Enlists! will appeal to readers with interests in war films and motion picture history, as well as politics and social history.
Author: Donald L. Miller
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439128227
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 706
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Book Description
Drawing on previously unpublished eyewitness accounts, prizewinning historian Donald L. Miller has written what critics are calling one of the most powerful accounts of warfare ever published. Here are the horror and heroism of World War II in the words of the men who fought it, the journalists who covered it, and the civilians who were caught in its fury. Miller gives us an up-close, deeply personal view of a war that was more savagely fought—and whose outcome was in greater doubt—than readers might imagine. This is the war that Americans at the home front would have read about had they had access to the previously censored testimony of the soldiers on which Miller builds his gripping narrative. Miller covers the entire war—on land, at sea, and in the air—and provides new coverage of the brutal island fighting in the Pacific, the bomber war over Europe, the liberation of the death camps, and the contributions of African Americans and other minorities. He concludes with a suspenseful, never-before-told story of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, based on interviews with the men who flew the mission that ended the war.
