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Navy had gained full ascendancy in the Pacific. In this period, and in the filmic conceptualisation of American boats opposed by expert anti-submarine forces, the impression of the US submarines as underdogs can be maintained. However, the types of operations portrayed in these films (actions against convoyed shipping, and penetration of the Inland Sea by American submarines) are more typical of the later war period, between 1943 and 1945.16 Although the mission contained by each film is concluded and conclusive in itself, the setting of these post-war films in the
, though much expanded, depiction of ‘combat’ between professional sailors and the sea. Anthony Aldgate and Jeffrey Richards, Britain Can Take It: The British Cinema in the Second World War, 2nd edn. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994), pp. 194–9. Peter B. High, The Imperial Screen: Japanese Film Culture in the Fifteen Years’ War (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), pp. 388–90, 478–84. The distinction drawn between the German Navy and the Nazi Party in post-war films is substantiated by the recorded anti-Nazi stances and statements of U-boat captains
France, where he mingled in surrealist circles. When financial hardship forced a return home, he wrote to the artist and poet Julian Trevelyan: ‘I sit about and paint and try not to lose my temper with this country and its ludicrous inhabitants.’ 41 Even during the height of his film career, he lamented to Cicely the lack of time available to paint. Lindsay Anderson dismissed Jennings’s post-war films, arguing that his ‘traditionalist spirit was unable to adjust itself to the changed circumstances of Britain after the war’. 42 The widely perceived lack of inspiration
strange melodrama Hanna Amon (1951), in its excessiveness one of the most anomalous and bizarre films of the early 1950s, and, like some of Harlan’s other post-war films, worthy of further critical attention. ( Note : thanks to Robert Kiss for bringing the film to my attention.) 27 Carter, ‘Sweeping up the Past’, p
section). In the USA, synergy between the film and television industries gradually amplified the dramatic priorities of industries more focused on entertainment. As Lipkin (2002) shows in his analysis of what he calls ‘semi-documentaries’, Twentieth-Century Fox led the way with a series of post-war film docudramas that utilised melodramatic tropes to ‘warrant’ their claims. Where the film industry had led, the made-for-TV movie followed. In Britain, a weak film industry could (and did) influence visual styles, but the journalistic link between 206 No other way to tell
height, Jean Renoir – the most important film-maker of the era, a talismanic figure in post-war film and arguably the greatest ever French director – was faced with a generally lukewarm reception from critics and audiences. Renoir had met popular success with his version of Emile Zola’s Nana in 1926, but in the ensuing decade his work was not well received despite encompassing a variety of genres from the comedy of Boudu
’ (64). However, the cultural project of unifying the nation lessens in importance in the post-war films, with a consequential change in the representation of the male group. The active service unit’s connections to life at home become less explicit and class divisions become more evident. Typically, there is a new emphasis on the heroes, individuals who are ‘set apart from the rest by their exceptional courage and commitment
Altman, George Lucas, Roman Polanski, Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg. As well as influences from French and Italian post-war film, the 1960s’ distrust of and contempt for authority, in combination with the weakening hand of studios, helped to spark a range of movies engaged in political debate and critique. 33 The 1970s saw Hollywood catch up with the counter-culture of the 1960s at a time when studios were having to take risks on younger scriptwriters and directors. Gritty realism and anti-authoritarianism were pervasive themes. Sandwiched between Bonnie and
. (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1986), pp. 36–8, 69–70. 32 Smith (2001), pp. 61–2. 33 The sympathetic treatment of the Japanese Navy, comparable to that of the German Navy in post-war films and distinct from negative portrayals of the Japanese Army, is remarkable given the evidence of Japanese naval war crimes. The perception of naval officers as honourable traditionalists, even in the cases of former enemies, seems to preclude associations with atrocities except in the (largely unjustified) portrayal of war crimes perpetrated by U-boats. See Samuel Eliot Morison, The
to the Stars – Terence Rattigan. Characteristically, his films continued to shift abruptly from the dark to the light, from the comic to the serious, from the middlebrow to the popular. Some of his post-war films, the best-known ones, followed the theatrical adaptation route which he had embarked upon with Pygmalion but some were more modest and less prestigious genre pieces. Notes 1 2 3 4 C. Barr (ed.), All Our Yesterdays (London: BFI Publishing, 1986), p. 11. World Film News (September 1937), p. 20. Barr, All Our Yesterdays, p. 11. K. Brownlow, David Lean