FILM AGAINST WAR?

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.