World War II, Film, and History [Paperback]

The immediacy and perceived truth of the visual image, as well as film and television's ability to propel viewers back into the past, place the genre of the historical film in a special category. War films--including antiwar films--have established the prevailing public image of war in the twentieth century. For American audiences, the dominant image of trench warfare in World War I has been provided by feature films such asAll Quiet on the Western FrontandPaths of Glory. The image of combat in the Second World War has been shaped by films likeSands of Iwo JimaandThe LongestDay. And despite claims for the alleged impact of widespread television coverage of the Vietnam War, it is actually films such asApocalypse NowandPlatoonwhich have provided the most powerful images of what is seen as the reality of that much disputed conflict. But to what degree does history written with lightning, as Woodrow Wilson allegedly said, represent the reality of the past? To what extent is visual history an oversimplification, or even a distortion of the past?
Exploring the relationship between moving images and the society and culture in which they were produced and received,World War II, Film, and Historyaddresses the power these images have had in determining our perception and memories of war. Examining how the public memory of war in the twentieth century has often been created more by a manufactured past than a remembered one, a leading group of historians discusses films dating from the early 1930s through the early 1990s, created by filmmakers the world over, from the United States and Germany to Japan and the former Soviet Union. For example, Freda Freiberg explains how the inter-racial melodramatic Japanese feature filmChina Nights, in which a manly and protective Japanese naval officer falls in love with a beautiful young Chinese street waif and molds her into a cultured, submissive wife,ló!