Hollywood And War Part V - America's Proper Gander

In the United States as in the Soviet Union, established feature film directors were called upon to step in and make propaganda films alongside seasoned documentarists. For the US War Department, the peculiar problem was to explain or 'sell' the war to a public that had no inkling as to why it was becoming embroiled in something that was happening more than six-thousand miles away.

Simultaneously, there was a call for war related films which as one critic deemed it - that they were an honest expression of national resolve and a clear indication of reality - unadorned with the usual Hollywood 'hoopla.' The US War Department not only harnessed the talents and experience of the entire American film industry, it also prepared itself to spend $50 million to ensure that it got what it wanted. In the fighting areas, there was countless footage of combat action which was ultimately used for military study and down the line, doctored and edited strategically for newsreels for cinematic consumption.

From Capra's Why We Fight documentary serial - this was not a sequel to It's A Wonderful Life.

The most influential of the US War Department's indoctrination films was Major Frank Capra's Why We Fight, a serial produced between 1942-1945, edited by both Willliam Hornbeck and a scrutinizing War Department, it consisted of seven elaborate compilations. The series was initially intended strictly for military purposes but most were eventually shown in cinemas throughout the United States and abroad. Their objective was to counterpoint the lessons of politics and war by focusing on the key events of the serious conflict. The result was an expertly sustained series of documentaries which transcended their original intention and proved profoundly influential in terms of documentary techniques in general whether for wartime of for peacetime purposes.

The troops troop on in John Ford's subversive Battle of Midway (1942)

The most enduring war documents of the period were those that stemmed from acclaimed Hollywood filmmakers who were called up for the specific purpose of recording the conflict. Chief among these were William Wyler, John Ford and John Huston. They were often shot in color, and with results which were frequently at odds with the wishes of the authorities, these directors contributed a small but remarkable group of documentaries impregnated with their creators' personal attitudes and artistic styles. John Ford led the way with The Battle of Midway in 1942 and respectively December 7th (1943).

All The Way From Memphis...Belle.

With a bit of alacrity, director John Ford had enlisted with the navy as a lieutenant-commander in charge of the Field Photographic Branch of the Office of Strategic Services, into which he recruited a few Hollywood colleagues in the names of Robert Parrish, Gregg Toland and Robert Montgomery. For The Battle of Midway - an account of the first significantly successful American action in the Pacific - Ford headed the photographic unit himself, getting so close in proximity to the battle that the camera recorded the jolts of bombing while getting maimed himself and would sustain wounds that later would lead to a partial loss of eyesight. The film garnered an Oscar as the best short documentary of 1942. It was an entirely personal blend of stark reality and Ford's myth-making.

The next war documentary that Ford turned out - the only other one of note he was able to complete during his wartime career was December 7th (1943). This account of Pearl Harbor had been commissioned as the highest levels of government and planned as a feature-length morale booster. Ford, however milked the opportunity to attack America's lack of preparedness in the Pacific. Ford's focus was on the seemingly more subversive activities by Japanese elements in Hawaii while the US Navy more or less stayed asleep. This proved completely unacceptable to the authorities and what finally did present itself in the theaters was a twenty minute long 'incentive' version which, ironically, earned Ford his second wartime Academy Award.

I left my heart in - San Pietro (1945)

A favorite method of presenting the conflict was to follow the fortunes of a single-fighting unit. William Wyler would utilize this technique to eloquent effect in 1944's The Memphis Belle, a first hand account of a B-17 Flying Fortress and its crew in bombing raids over Germany, which Wyler and cinematographer William Clothier themselves shooting the aerial combat scenes on an actual mission over Willhelmshaven. And even more spectacular was The Fighting Lady (1944), a story which was narrated by actor Robert Taylor - which concerned an aircraft carrier and its 3000 man crew in the Pacific waters. Astutely photographed by renowned artist Edward J. Steichen (1879-1973) a work that was memory staining for its use of synchronization of cameras with dive-bomber artillery, which recorded among many other things, the massacre of over 300 Japanese aircraft in one day.

                      Above, John Huston's reportage Report From The Aleutians

But perhaps the most telling and touching of the documentaries that depicted the archetypal American fighting man would be those from the lens of John Huston, who began his war career in 1943 with his Report From the Aleutians, an earnest story of ordinary soldiers situated on a remote and unsung posting in North Pacific's ' Bridge of Asia.' His subsequent reportage San Pietro (1945) was a veritable masterwork. Huston's clearly singular attitudes to the war invited harsh criticisms and ultimately censure. San Pietro, which was fly on the wall account of the 143rd Infantry Regiment's tortuous and costly attempts to take a German-held village in the Liri Valley in Italy, contrasted military objectives with the price paid in human courage and death. The War Department would condemn the film as both pacifistic and demoralizing and whittled Huston's 50-minute version down to a paltry thirty minutes running time - despite this, they failed to fully suppress the film's sorrow at the waste of war.

Let There Be Light (1946)

Huston's third and last contemporary statement regarding the war would come in the year 1946; Let There Be Light, this was received even more harshly than his prior efforts. Asked to produce a film about the treatment of soldiers suffering from war-induced neuroses, to reassure potential employers that these men were not permanently insane. Huston riposted with an intensely human document which again implicitly condemned the war and its heinous effects on the mind and on the spirit. On this occasion, the authorities decided that the film was far too outspoken in its condemnation of war. What resulted was an outright ban and the documentary was not exhibited until the Seventies - when many Americans were recovering from the shattering after-effects of the Vietnam war.