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153 153 9 The War in Film The Depiction of Combat in Glory Paul Haspel Edward Zwick’s film Glory (1990) dramatizes the story of the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, the first African American regiment raised in the North during the Civil War, and its commander, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. Any Civil War combat film will be judged, to some extent, by the verisimilitude of its battlefield sequences, and according to Martin Blatt, one element of the film that has received particular praise is “the authenticity with which Glory depicts battle scenes.” In an effort to build on the best traditions of Civil War cinema, Zwick viewed two classics of the genre—John Huston’s The Red Badge of Courage (1951) and Robert Enrico’s Au Coeur de la Vie (In the Midst of Life, 1963)—in preparation for directing Glory. Accordingly, the film’s dramatizations of three battles—Antietam, James Island, and Fort Wagner—differ significantly from one another in tone and style. Moreover, the film reconciles two differing schools of thought on the dramatization of war in the cinema—a tendency to show war as a meaningless hell, and a countervailing trend to present war as a difficult event that somehow allows a greater good to be achieved—contributing to its success as a work of art. Taken together, the sequences suggest that warfare without a higher purpose is simple butchery, whereas war with a clear ethical goal that goes beyond questions of national self-interest can be legitimate.1 Shaw’s own testimony, as recorded in his wartime letters, reveals that Antietam, the first battle depicted in Glory, made a deep impression on him. On September 21, 1862, then-Captain Shaw of the Second Massachusetts 154 Paul Haspel Regiment wrote to his father about the carnage he had witnessed four days earlier in western Maryland: “Beyond the cornfield was a large, open field, and such a mass of dead and wounded men, mostly Rebels, as were lying there, I never saw before; it was a terrible sight, and our men had to be very careful to avoid treading on them; many were mangled and torn to pieces by artillery. . . . Every battle makes me wish more and more that the war was over. It seems almost as if nothing could justify a battle like that of the 17th, and the horrors inseparable from it.”2 Glory’s Antietam sequence effectively reproduces the factors that filled Shaw with horror. After a prologue that shows African American refugee families traveling through the countryside, Captain Shaw (played by Matthew Broderick) is heard in a voice-over expressing the hope that Union victory will create a new set of conditions in which “all [Americans] can speak.” Shaw’s reflections gain additional power from James Horner’s evocative score, with the angelic vocals of the Boys Choir of Harlem indicating the moral righteousness of the Union cause. Robert Carr claims that “in this opening moment, the film is . . . predicated on a lie and a caesura,” as conveyed by “the lushly sentimental voice of [Shaw as] our central narrator.” In fact, however, the opening works to remind the audience of the moral issues at stake in the Civil War and puts the issues of African American freedom and human rights out front—in stark contrast to most earlier Civil War movies. From the beginning, the viewer is prompted to think about freedom and slavery as crucial issues in the war. The film is not predicated on a lie. Rather, Glory is what Ray Kinnard calls a “welcome and extremely forceful counterbalance to previous cinematic insensitivities,” refuting the old lies of Lost Cause apologists who downplayed slavery as a cause of the war while emphasizing southern gallantry.3 Immediately after Shaw’s voice-over ruminations, the caption “Antietam Creek, Maryland—September 17, 1862” appears on the screen. We see Shaw leading his Union soldiers forward in the assault, as other Union regimental officers do likewise. The accuracy and precision of the formations reflect the fact that reenactors well versed in Civil War history, rather than ordinary extras, were carrying out the maneuvers. Early in the production of Glory (a project with limited funding), Zwick and producer Freddie Fields took a film crew and obtained footage from a 1988 reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg . Zwick and Fields not only observed but also participated in the 12,000-strong reenactment. As Zwick declared, “We were out there for three [3.142.196.27] Project MUSE...

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