HNC Photography, IFC - Coursework, Introduction to Film Culture Blog, Part three - Fact or fiction? Truth or lies?, Project 2 - The birth of propaganda, Research & Reflection IFC
How the First World War was affected the Film industry
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2010/08/holl-a05.html
The above two articles a view of how the film industry was affected by WW1 from 2 very differing opinions.
I his 2000 Article in the New York times Stuart Klawans runs through how the war affected filmmakers on a personal level, especially as they edited and screened footage for public consumption.
Filmmakers were in fact thrown in a metaphorical front like as the witnessed, the death and destruction of the Great War unfold in the footage before their eyes. They had to decide what could be shown and what couldn’t and who to show this in a positive way to keep moral.
This as well as other fundamental changes to the structure of the cinema because of the changes happening in the world, including the shift of the French industry to a smaller more artisanal business.
Max Alvarez in his 2010 article for the World Socialist website, takes a different view on how the cinema industry changed “cinema has an imperialist weapon”; suggesting that the type of film emanating from Hollywood was designed to help bolster President Woodrow Wilson agenda for the USA entering the war in 1917. Keeping the public’s support and the studio we complicit in this propaganda as they the studio owners were majority European immigrants and wanted to show their support to their adopted country.
Stars we used by the government to aid recruitment and raise war funds Hollywood certainly played a part in the first world war and the first world war played a role in Hollywoods development.
Strangely WW1 never has been a large subject matter for Hollywood or cinema as a whole – why that would be I do not know. Perhaps 20 years was too short of a time for the juvenile film industry to come to term with such a global conflict before the globe was thrown into another.