Birth of a Nation: The Depiction of War in American Cinema, from D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation to Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds.

Article by Sam Nicoresti. Edited by Stephen Woodward. Research by Jack Barnes.

In 1915 D.W. Griffith’s ‘Birth of a Nation’ caused a rather large stir, mostly for being an adept civil war epic that all of sudden became an uncomfortably racist caricature after the interval for no easily discernible reason, but also for being a technical masterpiece in its own right, establishing many of the conventions that were to define the American war epic for decades to come. There is the story of love rent asunder by war, the epic re-enactments of historic battles, fictionalised accounts of factual events, and men who bravely fight and gallantly die for their country. Whilst these themes were by no means new in 1915, indeed, the tale of love between rivaling factions is undeniably Shakespearean, it was the use of cinema as the medium for these literary themes that made the film so innovative, and as such an important keystone in shaping early American war films.

In defense of his film, Griffith wrote that we must sometimes ‘show the dark side of wrong, that we may illuminate the bright side of virtue’, and this sentiment seems to be one that has in some ways affected serious depictions of war in American cinema throughout its history. Schindler’s List depicts the horrors of genocide in order to highlight the bravery of the few, whilst Saving Private Ryan graphically offends the eye in order to highlight nobility in the futility of a suicidal cause; a narrative which could be taken as allegorical of the larger conflict. A group of characters coming to terms with the suicidal necessity of their mission for the sake of fulfilling a larger duty is a theme that has cropped up in many post-WWII movies, and is reflective to some degree of the changing perceptions of conflict, brought about by the horrors and seeming wasteful futility of the two world wars.

American films produced within and concerning the First World War often cannot be trusted as independent artistic portrayals. Britain and France in particular led the charge of propagandist war reels and government sanctioned movies depicting the heroism and jingoism of dulce et decorum est, etc. etc. but America was by no means above this as it prepared to wade into the fray. In January of 1917 Woodrow Wilson had won the support of the senate with the cry of ‘Peace without victory’, and it was mainly by clever manipulation of propaganda through media such as the cinema that Wilson, only three months later, led his country to war with the public’s jingoist war cries still ringing in the soldiers’ ears. He was, as Roosevelt branded him, part of ‘a nauseous hypocrisy’, but cinema’s role as a tool of propaganda in war time should not be overlooked.

In WWII, for the main part, American war films fell between two extremes of comedies or propaganda. Film by this time in America was firmly established as an industry, an imperfect marriage between art and product, the ‘Hollywood’ Sign, had been constructed and copyrighted, and film companies were eager to reflect the general consensus of the public in order to sell tickets. After the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 introduced peace-time conscription to the U.S., Hollywood sanctioned war comedies from all of its major studios, notable examples including The Three Stooges’ ‘Boob’s Army’, Laurel & Hardy’s ‘Great Guns’, and Abbott and Costello’s ‘Buck Privates’. America’s ability to poke good-hearted fun at itself most likely stemmed from its isolation from the continent, and there’s an obvious degree of catharsis in the humour. It strikes one as being analogous to The Three Stooges unknowingly dodging enemy bullets and shells as they duck and buckle over with laughter brought on by their own laughing gas attack which, if you’ll forgive the pun, rather back fired. Comedies made up the bulk of early ’40s war films, and all of this was all well and fine, until December 7th, 1941, when the Japanese military led a surprise assault against Pearl Harbor, and all of a sudden for America the war just didn’t seem as funny anymore.

It is interesting to note that the actual reasons for America’s entry into WWII, and its rather explosive departure, are some of the least cross examined themes within a heavily saturated genre. Michael Bay’s typically loud cacophony of inconsolable noise that was 2001’s ‘Pearl Harbor’ is a good example of America’s attitude to its motives recounted in full technicolor. It is a film that focuses narrowly on one historical event in order to rely on an emotional response to create jingoistic sentiment in the face of horror, never twisting, but selecting the right facts to convey its message in the guise of objective historical accuracy.

At the opposite end of the war, the Paul Newman film ‘Fat Man and Little Boy’ and the lesser known ‘Above and Beyond’ are two of the only mainstream American films that deal with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which they do by not focusing on the event itself at all. ‘Above & Beyond’ stars as its hero Paul Tibbets, the man who dropped the first nuclear bomb, and it is a film that romanticises, tenderises, and humanises the story of Enola Gay’s pilots, whilst somewhat skimming over some of the wider repercussions of the film’s cataclysmic ending. It seems to be cinema’s prerogative to tell of the smaller human interest stories within the larger conflict of war, and within American cinema it is selective propaganda, by choosing what to commission and what to financially back, which highlights that imperfect marriage in film between artistic freedom of expression, and sellable commodities. America was rewriting its own victorious history in 35mm and it was not until America became embroiled in Vietnam that depictions of war in cinema began to change in line with shifting public attitudes.

When America began to deploy troops in Vietnam, Hollywood steadfastly and quite simply refused to fund or produce any films dealing with the conflict, with a few fairly unimportant, patriotic and heavily studio-influenced exceptions. It was only after the Tet Offensive, once operations had peaked, when Britain and France were beginning to seek out humour in war with films like ‘La Grand Vadrouille’ and series like ”Allo ‘Allo’ and ‘Dad’s Army’, whilst anti-war protests were reaching their peak, that America felt ready to begin dissecting their involvement in a conflict which did not on face value appear as clean cut as good versus evil. This time round Laurel & Hardy were not to be seen dusting of their old routine.

In a post-‘nam age, the legacy of war leaked out of the war-film genre and left its stain upon the rest of the film industry. Right from Rambo, through Travis Bickle, and Big Lebowski’s Walter Sobchak, the long term mental effects and mindsets of Vietnam on its veterans were being portrayed in more than just the films commonly associated with the war genre. By this time the war film could not be further removed from the conventions of Griffith’s ‘Birth of a Nation’, although then again neither could the wars themselves. New structures were being established. A typical example was the ‘Full Metal Jacket’ model, echoed in more modern films like ‘Jarhead’. A group of boys relentlessly training to become marines, a tough as 3D-tetris drill sergeant, and the inevitable death of one of the group in some futile way. Then the part where the group, now freshly graduated from Marine-101 are suddenly in the middle of the battle-zone, all of a sudden not seeming quite as prepared as they were one fade-out previously. All this followed by the waiting, the establishing of relationships, and then the sudden onset of mass slaughter in all its hellish forms. Interestingly enough this model also applies to the 1930s adaptation of ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’; perhaps these modern war films weren’t as removed as all that.

In the ’90s, the popularity of WWII films saw a resurgence and films concerning Vietnam fell by the way side. It seemed that American cinema wanted a return to a war that it could get its head around, and in doing so it quickly branched off into increasingly fictional and detached retellings of an increasingly distant war. Through the years Nazis had been constructed into their own cinematic institution far removed from their historical namesakes, ranking up there with cinematic institutions like zombies and vampires, which film had claimed for its own. The fantastic ‘Dead Snow’, which is about dead, Nazi zombies in some snow, seems a perfect example of this emerging trend.

However, to my mind, the greatest example of this is Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, which seems allegorical of America’s changing depiction of war. Basterds is pure unadulterated fantasy dressed up in historical costumes, and Tarantino’s thinly veiled analogy of the genre itself.

It is not a coincidence that the cataclysmic setting for the burning and slaughter of hordes of Nazis, including Hitler himself, takes place within the confines of a cinema, as the projected visage of the downtrodden Jewish proprietor laughs derisively from the big screen. The cinema is where the victors have taken the revenge never satisfactorily awarded to them, reliving the horrors in grainy black and white, and cathartically portraying violent fantasy in high definition. America’s ambiguous motives behind Hiroshima & Nagasaki, and its messy involvement in Vietnam, seems to have spurred it on into portraying itself as the main belligerents in the war against Hitler, lusting after the halcyon days of a bygone war where, despite the futility, the horror, and the bloodshed, the righteous seemed so much more clearly defined.

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