{"id":420,"date":"2023-07-19T15:00:36","date_gmt":"2023-07-19T15:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/?p=420"},"modified":"2023-07-19T15:00:36","modified_gmt":"2023-07-19T15:00:36","slug":"world-war-i-activity-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/world-war-i-activity-6\/","title":{"rendered":"World War I: Activity 6"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-cover is-light\" style=\"min-height:201px;aspect-ratio:unset;\"><span aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-cover__background has-background-dim\" style=\"background-color:#bf5700\"><\/span><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"372\" class=\"wp-block-cover__image-background wp-image-298\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2023\/07\/module-7.jpeg\" data-object-fit=\"cover\" srcset=\"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2023\/07\/module-7.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2023\/07\/module-7-300x109.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2023\/07\/module-7-768x279.jpeg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><div class=\"wp-block-cover__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-cover-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-white-color has-text-color has-x-large-font-size\">WWI in Film<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:19px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignleft size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" height=\"80\" src=\"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2023\/07\/Hollywood-Versus-History.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-103\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center has-white-color has-text-color has-background\" style=\"background-color:#333f48\">Hollywood Versus History<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-color\" style=\"color:#bf5700;font-size:clamp(14.642px, 0.915rem + ((1vw - 3.2px) * 0.681), 22px);\"><strong>Films of the First World War\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>War films are among the oldest film genres. Only a few hours after the United States declared war on Spain in 1898, nickelodeons screened a jingoistic short film called <em>Tearing Down the Flag<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Movies are the closest most of us will ever get to combat. It is through movies that we learn about the intensity, carnage, fear, and heroism of war and the arbitrariness of combat death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In general, the best war films are made in sobering hindsight during peacetime. During wartime, war films tend to be unabashedly patriotic. These films are expected to build morale and garner support for the war effort. Wartime movies often demonize the enemy and transform a conflict into a simplistic battle between good and evil. It is only after wars are over that the movies can reflect on the broad issues of morality and personal responsibility raised by war as well as issues of heroism and hero worship on the homefront. Many war movies deal with issues of conscience and character. It is in the heat of battle that we discover a combatant\u2019s true character. It is here we learn about discipline, teamwork, sacrifice, and courage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video\"><video height=\"360\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 480 \/ 360;\" width=\"480\" controls src=\"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2023\/07\/Tearing-Down-the-Flag.mp4\"><track src=\"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2023\/07\/Tearing-Down-the-Flag.vtt\" srclang=\"English\" \/><\/video><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Ambivalence marks many war movies. Even the most fiercely anti-war film invariably makes the excitement, bravery, heroism, male bonding, and sacrifice of wartime look appealing. Yet even the most unapologetically bellicose films raise questions about loss and the human cost and waste of war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>War movies take radically different forms. There are battle epics, military comedies, propaganda films, action movies with military motifs, love stories in uniform, and even military musicals. Certain themes run through war films. One recurrent theme involves the psychological impact of war. Some movies suggest that it is in war that a boy will prove himself a man, while others suggest that war\u2019s invariably inflict a heavy psychic toll on soldiers. Another theme involves the military mindset. Many antiwar pictures suggest that the military hierarchy is motivated only by personal ambition and that officers are largely indifferent to the death of their troops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video\"><video height=\"314\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 640 \/ 314;\" width=\"640\" controls src=\"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2023\/07\/Peter-Weir-Gallipoli-1981.mp4\"><track src=\"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2023\/07\/Peter-Weir-Gallipoli-1981.vtt\" srclang=\"English\" \/><\/video><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>World War I inspired many of the greatest movies ever made\u2014especially great anti-war movies. These range from Abel Glance\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/resource-space.la.utexas.edu\/filestore\/2\/5\/2\/4_9a51e1d92c38cec\/2524_379954991859e8b.mp4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>J\u2019accuse<\/em><\/a> (1919) and Jean Renoir\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/resource-space.la.utexas.edu\/filestore\/2\/5\/2\/0_a14bca8646fe1bb\/2520_05bba7e05459603.mp4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>Grand Illusion<\/em><\/a>&nbsp;(1937) to David Lean\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/resource-space.la.utexas.edu\/filestore\/2\/5\/2\/1_44ca59d576772c7\/2521_085ab826545b0f9.crdownload\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>Lawrence of Arabia<\/em><\/a> (1962) and Peter Weir\u2019s <em>Gallipoli<\/em> (1981). <em>J\u2019accuse<\/em> tells the story of a poet who returns shell-shocked from the trenches to a village of grieving widows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was during World War I that government first recognized the role that film could serve in swaying public opinion. During the first world war, the movie industry did everything it could to associate itself with patriotism. It made rabidly pro-war films like <em>The Beast of Berlin<\/em>. Theaters were festooned with flags and patriotic banners. Enlistment stations were set up in theater lobbies. Organists and pianists played patriotic music, and, during reel changes, \u201cfour-minute men\u201d gave pep talks to stimulate support for the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video\"><video height=\"360\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 480 \/ 360;\" width=\"480\" controls src=\"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2023\/07\/Wings-1927.mp4\"><track src=\"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2023\/07\/Wings-1927.vtt\" srclang=\"English\" \/><\/video><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>A few postwar films, like <em>Wings<\/em> (1927), which won the first Academy Award for Best Picture, treated World War I as an adventure, focusing on the glamorous exploits of pilots. But the conflict also inspired many of the most powerful anti-war pictures ever made, beginning with <em>The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse<\/em> (1921) and <a href=\"http:\/\/resource-space.la.utexas.edu\/filestore\/2\/5\/2\/2_38981369cc20764\/2522_b4d10d0155b1fcb.mp4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>The Big Parade<\/em><\/a> (1925). The film adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque\u2019s <em>All Quiet on the Western Front<\/em> (1930), in particular, captured the public\u2019s sense that the wartime sacrifices had been meaningless and futile. This film follows a group of German volunteers from school to the battlefield, and traces the disintegration of their romantic ideas of war, gallantry, and fatherland in the squalor of the trenches. Other films like <em>The Dawn Patrol<\/em>, <em>No Greater Glory<\/em>, and <em>Broken Lullaby<\/em> showed war&#8217;s carnage and made emotional pleas for brotherhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>World War II compelled Hollywood to totally revise the meaning of World War I. The notion that the war had been meaningless had to be erased. As American involvement in World War II approached, <em>Sergeant York<\/em> (1941) followed a backwoods Tennessee pacifist from his belief that war violates the Bible\u2019s teachings to his acceptance of the necessity of warfare as necessary to defend freedom. He then proceeds to kill more than twenty German soldiers and force 132 others to surrender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video\"><video height=\"360\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 458 \/ 360;\" width=\"458\" controls src=\"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2023\/07\/Remarques-All-Quiet-on-the-Western-Front-1930.mp4\"><track src=\"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2023\/07\/Remarques-All-Quiet-on-the-Western-Front-1930.vtt\" srclang=\"English\" \/><\/video><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Many directors who had made passionately antiwar films during the 1930s began to make pro-war movies. Frank Borzage, who had directed the 1934 pacifist film <em>No Great Glory<\/em> celebrated the Navy Hellcats in his 1940 picture <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/resource-space.la.utexas.edu\/filestore\/2\/5\/2\/6_267fad71df979c6\/2526_2ad6b6084f95cdf.mp4\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Flight Command<\/em><\/a>. Howard Hawks, who had made <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/resource-space.la.utexas.edu\/filestore\/2\/5\/2\/7_5b9e8ed7c8a538e\/2527_d55e204bc2a9b3b.mp4\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Dawn Patrol<\/em> <\/a>(1934) made <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/resource-space.la.utexas.edu\/filestore\/2\/5\/2\/5_25e4dffaf72f4c3\/2525_d60e7af8863d64a.mp4\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Air Force<\/em><\/a> (1943), which describes a Flying Fortress crew in action at Wake Island, the Philippines, and the Battle of the Coral Sea. And Lewis Milestone, who directed <em>All Quiet on the Western Front<\/em>, went on to make such World War II films as <em>Purple Heart<\/em> (1944), the story of the crew of a downed American bomber, and <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/resource-space.la.utexas.edu\/filestore\/2\/5\/2\/3_40f11f54825b92d\/2523_708f22fbff7a601.mp4\" target=\"_blank\"><em>A Walk in the Sun<\/em><\/a> (1945), about wartime infantrymen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video\"><video height=\"360\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 640 \/ 360;\" width=\"640\" controls src=\"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2023\/07\/Dawn-Patrol-1938.mp4\"><track src=\"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2023\/07\/Dawn-Patrol-1938.vtt\" srclang=\"English\" \/><\/video><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" \/>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignleft size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" height=\"80\" src=\"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2023\/07\/Hollywood-Versus-History.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-103\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center has-white-color has-text-color has-background\" style=\"background-color:#333f48\">Hollywood Versus History<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-color\" style=\"color:#bf5700\"><em>Paths of Glory<\/em><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Stanley Kubrick\u2019s anti-war classic of soldiers accused of cowardice takes its title from Thomas Gray\u2019s eighteenth-century poem, \u201cElegy Written in a Country Churchyard,&#8221; which contains the line: \u201cThe paths of glory lead but to the grave.\u201d Based on an incident during the Battle of Verdun in 1916, in which as many as 100,000 French soldiers lost their lives striving to retake Fort Douaumont from the Germans, the film examines gulf between the military commanders who plot strategy and the weary soldiers in the trenches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video\"><video height=\"480\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 638 \/ 480;\" width=\"638\" controls src=\"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2023\/07\/Paths-of-Glory1957.mp4\"><track src=\"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2023\/07\/Paths-of-Glory1957.vtt\" srclang=\"English\" \/><\/video><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Paths of Glory<\/em>, released in 1957, just twelve years after the end of World War II and four years after the end of the Korean war, is one of the most powerful anti-war statements ever produced. It also helped cement World War I\u2019s reputation as history\u2019s most vivid demonstration of the futility and absurdity of war.&nbsp;The film\u2019s title and plot underscore the notion that World War I was a tragic waste.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the third year of the war, the erudite but morally bankrupt French General George Broulard orders his troops to seize the heavily fortified &#8220;Ant Hill&#8221; from the Germans. General Paul Mireau knows that this action will be suicidal, but he will sacrifice his men to enhance his own reputation. Against his better judgment, Colonel Dax leads the charge, and the results are appalling.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After the defeat, Mireau cannot admit to himself that the attack was a bad idea from the outset: he convinces himself that loss of Ant Hill was due to the cowardice of his men. Mireau demands that three soldiers be selected by lot to be executed as an example to rest of the troops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hollywood Versus History Films of the First World War\u00a0 War films are among the oldest film genres. Only a few hours after the United States declared war on Spain in 1898, nickelodeons screened a jingoistic short film called Tearing Down the Flag. Movies are the closest most of us will ever get to combat. It [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"vec496","author_link":"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/author\/vec496\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Hollywood Versus History Films of the First World War\u00a0 War films are among the oldest film genres. Only a few hours after the United States declared war on Spain in 1898, nickelodeons screened a jingoistic short film called Tearing Down the Flag. Movies are the closest most of us will ever get to combat. It&hellip;","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":449,"href":"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions\/449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315l-external\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}