Special Editor's Introduction: World War II in Film and History

Special Editor's Introduction | Editor's Corner Robert W. Matson University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown Special Editor's Introduction: World War II in Film and History /rank Capra, a director whose impact on filmgoers of the Second World War era was as strong as any, reportedly said: ? never cease to thrill at an audience seeing a picture. For two hours you've got 'em. Hitler can't keep 'em that long. You eventually reach even more people than Roosevelt does on radio. Imagine what Shakespeare would have given for an audience like that!"1 In a somewhat different sense than he intended, Capra's remarks are apropos a half-century later. The films of World War II have indeed reached an audience far larger than those of. FDR's fireside chats and they continue to claim the attention of viewers over whom the propaganda of wartime itself holds no sway. But the staying power of these films, like that of the visual record in general, poses a challenge to subsequent generations of viewers, especially those who want to treat the movies as a primary source for the study of the era itself. History, we must remember, is the study of the debris of the past. With us here in today's world is a vast, chaotic, and usually inert body of data created by people of earlier times for their own purposes, and from which we attempt to draw meaning. Amid this dusty trove, some of the pieces shine with especially attractive brilliance. Thus it is with these films that appear to live beyond their time. "When image becomes substance," Paul Gilster warns, "and the picture too often substitutes for the thousand words that would more accurately describe an event or an idea, the audience is in the danger of being misled."2 It is to that danger that this special issue of Film & History is directed. Here we hope to unite the strengths of word and picture. In the first essay, Michael Todd Bennett anchors his discussion of prewar and early wartime films in a solid analysis of the international scene and provides a firm foundation for the specific studies that follow. The change from neutrality to belligerent status was awkward for many Americans, an awkwardness Bennett finds, among Vol. 27.1-4(1997) | 1 Matson !Special Editor's Introduction: World War Il in Film and History other examples, in the reluctant hero Alvin York. The next two essays move immediately into this emotional terrain, first as Michael Birdwell scrutinizes the two Sergeants York-movie and real life-then as Heather Frazer and John O'Sullivan use the experience of actor Lew Ayres to examine Hollywood and the dilemma for both the individual and society of conscientious objection to war. Then, two articles address the onset of hostilities for the United States and explore the intertwined ramifications of that great event in the land and in its movie theaters. Ralph Donald delves into the Pearl Harbor attack itself in "Awakening a Sleeping Giant," and Michael Paris explicates a fictionalized account of an air crew involved in the attack and its aftermath in "Democracy Goes to War." Next comes the world of battle, observed through two quite different filters. Dan Cabaniss elucidates military life as it was reflected in show musicals in 77j/s Is the Army, while Suzanne Broderick seeks an authentic understanding of a soldier's experience by combining the skills of film study and oral history in her essay "Tough Ombres." Three articles then address particular themes: captivity, individual commitment, and propaganda. In the first two of these studies, Eliott Grüner and Daniel Shaw draw their analyses from individual films in which these themes receive notable development. By contrast, Professors Gustainis and DeSilva focus on the work of a noteworthy director, Alfred Hitchcock. They also reintroduce the topic of Anglo-American relations with which the series of articles began. Fittingly, John Nichols's essay "The Atomic Agincourt" extends this consideration into the postwar era. The appetites for further reading and study that will no doubt be whetted by this collection of insightful and creative scholarship will find satisfaction in the annotated booklist that follows, created by...