Vicarious Adventures

As a twenty-first century conundrum, why do modern-day nations—often with elaborate pomp and ceremony—express their opposition and disdain toward warfare, while at the same time their citizenry, sitting in front of large-size television screens, enjoy combat films, those motion pictures saturated with heroic victories where their favorite movie star pulverizes another invader, some nefarious enemy hoping to destroy a simpler way of life? Really, what is going on? If peace is a nation’s profession (to rephrase SAC’s emblematic motto), why does the motion picture industry grind out one war photodrama after another? Why do audiences crave such vicarious adventures? Can anyone explain this contradiction?

To exasperate matters, most of these wartime motion pictures contain distortions, inaccuracies, and myths. On the American frontier, did Henry Fonda and Mel Gibson really help the colonists rout their Anglo-Saxon enemies? How about Fess Parker’s knife-wielding Alamo death? Was that accurate? Did Major John Howard’s Pegasus Bridge commandos go hand-over-hand to remove German explosives? And what about Gregory Peck? Did he really hold Pork Chop Hill? Does any of this matter? Or has a cinematic reality been achieved by modifying Carleton Young’s prophetic words—when the legend becomes fact, make a movie about the legend.

Clearly these prescient words from Liberty Valance need no explanation. Every nation with a forceful filmmaking industry has showcased its many conflicts with real-life heroes. Americans worship John Wayne, the British adore Jack Hawkins, and the French idolize Jean-Paul Belmondo. Even the Japanese go gaga about Ken Watanabe. But what about motion pictures from the largest landmass nation on the globe? A country that—during the twentieth century—experienced unprecedented upheavals: World War I, a czar deposed, a polarized civil war, Leninism, Stalinism, World War II, the Gulags, the Thaw, numerous Cold War leaders and strategies, military invasions into Afghanistan and Chechnya, and, finally, the rapid break-up of the fifteen republics that formed the USSR. Who are their cinematic heroes? What popular wartime photoplays remain in the public awareness?

These are some of the questions posed by a University of Vermont professor in an elaborate survey about this large Euro-Asian nation’s wartime motion picture output. Russian War Films: On the Cinema Front 1914–2005 scrutinizes 160 selective titles that glorify Soviet achievements and victories. As Dr. Denise J. Youngblood details most of these photodramas deal with, “heroism, sacrifice, resistance, suffering, leadership, responsibility, or collaboration.” After all, she continues, “the USSR was born in war (World War I) and, argumentably, ended in war (Afghanistan).”

Starting with such landmark silent titles as Little Red Devils (1923) and Wind (1926), two storylines that lauded Bolshevik victories, then on to the sound era with Borderlands, a World War I picture glorifying the Russian soldier, followed by Stalin’s socialist realism decree, which created Chapaev (1934), Soviet film productions were in high gear. The Great Patriotic War created dozens of propaganda titles including The Regional Party Secretary (1942) and The Invasion (1944), while the postwar period permitted The Cranes Are Flying (1957) and The Ballad of a Soldier (1959). Later photodramas, in one form or another, exalted the Soviet state in Liberation (1968–71) and Quagmire (1977).

The glasnost period heralded Tegeran-43 (1980) and Kindergarten (1984) two World War II dramas while a later picture, critical of the Great Terror, Burnt By the Sun (1994), opened the door for more honest screenplays of past events. The Afghanistan and Chechen intrusions offered The Afghan (1991) and The Prisoner of the Caucus (1996). By century’s end, the Russian film industry had changed directions. The Cuckoo (2002) and In the Constellation of Taurus (2003) showcased futility and romance—rather than everyday heroics—as their main theme.

Without question, Professor Youngblood ‘s massive study does not miss a beat as it details dozens of screenplays placing their content into historical perspective posturing the relationship between cinema and its society. The ruling powers, naturally, controlled the motion picture industry and this...