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William Wyler's World War II Films and the Bombing of Civilian Populations

2009; Routledge; Volume: 29; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01439680802704724

1465-3451

Daniel Marcus,

Cinema and Media Studies

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgement The author thanks Flo Martin and Antje Rauwerda for their comments on a draft of this article. Notes Notes 1 See Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Goes to War: how politics, profits, and propaganda shaped World War II movies (New York, 1987), and the government-produced Why We Fight: prelude to war (Frank Capra, US Army; USA, 1943). 2 Erich Ludendorff, The ‘Total’ War (London, 1936). 3 John Buckley, Air Power in the Age of Total War (Bloomington, IN, 1999); Erik Markusen and David Kopf, The Holocaust and Strategic Bombing: genocide and strategic bombing in the twentieth century (Boulder, CO, 1995); Zybnek Zeman, Selling the War: art and propaganda in World War II (London, 1978). 4 H. Bruce Franklin, War Stars: the superweapon and the American imagination (New York, 1988). 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid.; Michael S. Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power: the creation of Armageddon (New Haven, 1987). 7 Franklin. 8 Sherry; George H. Roeder, Jr., The Censored War: American visual experience during World War Two (New Haven, 1993); George E. Hopkins, Bombing and the American Conscience During World War II, The Historian, 28 (1966), 451–473. 9 Target for Tonight (Harry Watt, Crown Film Unit; UK, 1941); K. R. M. Short, RAF Bomber Command's ‘Target for Tonight’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 17 (1997), 181–218; for more on British documentaries on the subject, see K. R. M. Short, Screening the Propaganda of British Air Power (Trowbridge, UK, 1997). 10 Roeder. 11 Mrs. Miniver (William Wyler, M-G-M; US, 1942). See Koppes and Black. For biographies of Wyler, see Michael A. Anderegg, William Wyler (Boston, 1979), and Jan Herman, A Talent for Trouble: the life of Hollywood's most acclaimed director, William Wyler (Cambridge, MA, 1997). 12 Robert Lawson Peebles, European Conflict and Hollywood's Reconstruction of English Fiction, Yearbook of English Studies, 26 (1996), 1–13, which includes analysis of the most famous revamping of British image, the less conflictual ending in the film version of Pride and Prejudice. 13 Anderegg. 14 Sherry. 15 Sherry; Franklin. 16 For analyses of American war films made during the period, see Roeder; Jeanine Basinger, The World War II Combat Film: anatomy of a genre (New York, 1986); Thomas Doherty, Projections of War: Hollywood, American culture, and World War II (New York, 1993); and Kathryn Kane, Visions of War: Hollywood combat films of World War II (Ann Arbor, 1986). 17 Kane. 18 Roeder. 19 The Memphis Belle: a story of a flying fortress (William Wyler, US Signal Corps; US, 1944); see Doherty; Charles Affron, Reading the fiction of nonfiction: William Wyler's Memphis Belle, Quarterly Review of Film Studies, 7 (1982), 53–59. 20 Kane. 21 Thunderbolt (William Wyler and John Sturges, US Signal Corps; US, 1947). 22 Herman. 23 The Memphis Belle (Michael Caton-Jones, Warner Bros.; UK, 1990). 24 Douglas Kellner, The Persian Gulf TV War (Boulder, CO, 1992); Susan Jeffords and Lauren Rabinovitz, Seeing Through the Media: the Persian Gulf War (New Brunswick, 1994).