It was a good thought by a TV
company recently to screen the film Oh What a Lovely War in
November - when our dignified remembrance
of the dead can so easily be made into
an undignified celebration of war. Oh What a Lovely War is a mockery
of the way the first world war was
prepared for and managed. Is it really an anti-war film though, as we may think
it is?
One of the earliest and probably most famous "anti war" film was All Quiet on the
Western Front, a German film of 1930 , La Grande Illusion appeared in 1937, world war 2 came in 1939. Oh What
a Lovely War in 1969 and many other films
were screened through the years commemorating personal , family and communal tragedy
suffered in government wars for profit
and in peoples' revolutions.
Have they helped to stop or prevent war
? Some of them have provoked horror,
anger, some have provoked ridicule and laughter at the stupidity of generals -
but are they really protests about war itself,
that is, really anti-war films ? Or are they
protests at and mockery of wars
that are unnecessarily cruel and wasteful of lives and money, that is, "not run efficiently ? Are they suggesting that if
war is run efficiently, not by vainglorious generals and politicians but by coolly rational
technicians they would be, perhaps, all right ?
One of the most harrowing war films was Paths of Glory made in 1957, a
story of French soldiers executed for cowardice when the real fault was the
foolishness and vanity of their war leaders. It was an invitation to think
about what war organisers do even to their own soldiers. What they do to their
own veterans we could see in my young days in ex-soldiers , some missing a
limb, selling matches or drawing chalk pictures on the pavements
of Belfast streets .
Simon Rose in his monumental Classic Film Guide (1995)
mentions some of the "anti-war", or perhaps
"war-critical" films censored or banned by powerful people who did
not consider their message, however limited, suitable for human consumption : La Grande
Illusion was banned in Germany, Paths of Glory banned in France, All
Quiet on the Western Front banned in
Poland and France, Battleship Potemkin was banned in England. This last one was made in 1925, the year I
was born, I still look at it from time
to time. Powerful people were afraid
that showing it would encourage revolution at home after what happened
in Russia - LLoyd George took a more effective line in England by conceding
some after-war social changes to people instead of just banning or beating those
who asked for them or revealed the
revolutionary consequences of bad government .
Film was recognised very
early in its evolution as a new, exciting means of propaganda , good or bad. Film became accused of promoting immorality, morality,
war, peace , upper- class emptiness, middles-class ordinariness, various
heroisms, cowardices and whatnot, never being an upholder or opponent of any of
these in particular. Film is about propaganda - in the proper meaning of the word,
propaganda being what somebody wants to propagate, sow seeds about , help to
flourish, increase, spread, sowing
either good seed or bad weed. The
Vatican has a department of Propaganda, spreading
and promoting its Faith, other governments have departments of Propaganda
with one title or another, promoting their culture and politics. Film as propaganda for or against all of them
arrived very soon after the first projected
pictures stared to move on the wall, its propaganda value recognised.
Some films were good as propaganda, some not, some were good
in their own artistic right some not.
Odd Man Out (1947)
was a propaganda film set in Belfast, beautifully done, an exhibition piece in
black and white, still a delight to watch , a romantic James Mason struggling
to stay alive after a revolutionary robbery ; The Third Man (1949) was
about good American and British governments against bad
peddlers of fake medicine in post war Vienna . The Informer (1935)was a tragedy of personal greed and
what people do when it threatens their people's
revolution.
Watching films like Paths
of Glory or Oh What a Lovely War soldiers who have suffered under military
personnel of higher rank can have a welcome laugh at a pompous non-commissioned
officer, a presumptuous commissioned officer,
a too good sounding chaplain on film, but that does not mean they or the film
have a revulsion against war either as a
career for themselves or as a profitable business for somebody else . A real anti-war film has to be a rational and direct attack on those who make
war for profit, make war armaments for
business , push fellow citizens, even their own children, towards war from
infancy. And this is a difficult story to tell in a world that insists
that The Most Deaths Solve The Biggest Problems and where financiers are more
welcome than pacifists.
It is a lot to ask
commercial cinema to make effective anti-war films, given their need not only for finance but for happy endings. So the
most hopeful and effective anti-war films
will probably be short, unflinchingly directed at the heart of the
matter and inspired by a deep personal conviction on the part of those who risk
making them .
In his book At Play in the Lions' Den , A
Biography and Memoir of Dan Berrigan Jim Forest reminds us that Dan's play, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine
- factual, dangerous and real anti-war
theatre - became the basis of a real anti-war film. The film was produced by
Gregory Peck who lost tens of thousands
of dollars making it:
"The play became a movie produced by Gregory Peck , a
project in which he took particular pride.... it's a film, he told me , that
has so far paid back very few of the pennies that went into making it , but I
predict it will be remembered long after I'm gone as one of the genuinely
important films of its time". (At
Play in the Lions' Den , A Biography and Memoir of Daniel Berrigan by
Jim Forest , Orbis Books 2017)
That film reflected unselfish financing , was acceptably short ,
unflinchingly directed at the heart of the problem of war-for-profit and inspired by a deep personal conviction on the
part of those who risked making it. They
say it lost about a hundred thousand dollars.
