Gone with the Glory: The Civil War in Cinema (review)

Since the early twentieth century, few mediums have proven as powerful and far-reaching as cinema. Through lighting, sound, special effects, makeup, set design, costume, and, of course, the critical element of casting, film producers have overwhelmingly demonstrated their ability to bring both fictional and true stories to life. Not surprisingly, from its infancy Hollywood has latched onto one of the most poignant moments in U.S. history, the American Civil War. In his cleverly titled monograph, Brian Steel Wills has captured the magic evident in celluloid by taking the reader on a journey of the Civil War as seen through the lens of Hollywood cameras between 1911 and 2003.

Organized into fourteen chapters, Wills leads the reader through a vast terrain of Civil War cinema beginning not with Birth of a Nation (as one might expect) but with D. W. Griffith’s lesser-known 1911 film, His Trust. Moving primarily chronologically, he provides detailed plot summaries of more than ninety films, including both blockbusters and relatively obscure titles. One especially insightful aspect of his study is the way he organizes films by theme, thus pictures are categorized by such varying topics as the divided family, the war and railroads, and the West. This reveals connections among films that might not seem obvious, such as The Red Badge of Courage, The Man from Colorado, and Cold Mountain, all of which he classifies under the heading “the personal war.” Moreover, such a structure enables Wills to demonstrate the ways movies influence one another. Raintree County, he explains, was in part an attempt to recreate the “sweep and popular appeal of Gone with the Wind” even as it “fell far short” of its Oscar-winning predecessor (35).

Wills is most concerned, however, with analyzing movie plots for historical accuracy. He points out several films that fall far short of what really happened, including The Horse Soldiers, Journey to Shiloh, and even the much-hailed Glory. Conversely, he concludes that Gangs of New York and Gods and Generals get “a great deal right” (153, 159). Overall, he determines that most films offer the viewer entertainment but little historical accuracy, reminding us that “it is evident how little the real war has made its way onto celluloid” (186).

Although Wills notes in his epilogue that “motion pictures tell us more about the times in which they appear than the periods being depicted on screen,” he provides little evidence to support this claim (186). For instance, he mentions that The Horse Soldiers (1959) was a product of the cold war, but he does not expand on the significance of this. Moreover, he notes that the film “handles the issue of slavery delicately,” but he does not explain why this might have been the case in the wake of a growing civil rights movement. He might have more fully explored the ways Shenandoah, released in 1965, served as an antiwar reaction to Vietnam. Alternatively, he might have elaborated on why Glory, a film highlighting African Americans’ contributions to the war, appeared when it did. He does contend that audiences in the 1940s and 1950s cheered the prospect of Northerners and Southerners fighting a common foe in Westerns (Native Americans), but here again he does not pursue why this theme of reconciliation would play so well with audiences in the post–World War II years. While there are occasional references to the context in which the films were produced, an extended analysis on the ways the films reflected both producers’ and audiences’ evolving interpretations of the Civil War would have made this volume all the more valuable.

Even as such, this book is a must-read for those with a penchant for Civil War movies and will be invaluable to instructors wishing to screen films in class. But beware, after reading this book you will likely find yourself heading to your local video store in search of some of these titles—and you will...