It’s Memorial Day weekend, and that can only mean that TV networks will be hauling out war-related films from their vaults. TCM (Turner Classic Movies), for example, has scheduled wall-to-wall war movies all weekend long. Their offerings focus heavily on World War II stories and include many of the genre’s standards, including Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), From Here to Eternity (1953), Flying Tigers (1942), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), and the star-D-Day classic The Longest Day (1962). (Other films are less well-known and involve conflicts ranging from the Civil War to Korea. Film history buffs who are up late on Sunday may want to check out D.W. Griffith’s 1918 silent film Hearts of the World, set in World War I.)
As the TCM line-up demonstrates, war movies have been a staple in Hollywood since the earliest days of the movie business. Wars may be hell, but they provide ample material for stirring narratives.
War movies tend to fall into one of several categories. Of these, the most prominent is probably the soldier-as-hero genre, in which the trials and tribulations of a small group of soldiers is followed. Another popular category is the war epic (think Tora! Tora! Tora!), basically procedurals in which the drama is based on the inner workings and strategic moves of the warring parties. Unlike the soldier-as-hero films, in which the fate of the lead characters is often unknown in advance, in the epic films, audiences already know who will win and at what cost.
It is no surprise that even today, many, if not most, viewers seem to prefer war films set in the World War II era or earlier, even though many movies have been made about the wars in Korea, Vietnam, and more recently, the Persian Gulf. World War II is a safer bet for many viewers, it seems. The cost of that war was high, but the victory was moral as well and military. It was not an ambiguous conflict.
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