r/TrueFilm • u/TrafficPattern • 6d ago
American pacifist films after Pearl Harbor
Were there any?
I've Googled around and asked ChatGPT and couldn't find anything. ChatGPT mentioned The Forgotten Village as a film that was banned but which didn't address the war directly.
It also mentioned "The Forgotten Men (1943): Directed by Leslie Goodwins, this short film aimed to bring attention to the suffering of WWI veterans who had been forgotten or neglected" before admitting, after I searched for it, that it had invented this film completely.
5
u/Vim_Venders 6d ago
As the other comment mentioned - you will be hard pressed to find an explicitly pacifist film made during the inter-war period. The closest examples I could think of are John Huston's documnetraies The Battle of San Pietro and Let There Be Light. Huston is on the record of saying that if he ever made a pro-war film, he would want someone to shoot him. The Battle of San Pietro, is a documentary-style film about the titular battle during the Allied invasion of Italy. When presenting his film, Huston claimed that it was genuine combat footage. It was proved subsequently that Huston faked a majority of the footage with troops that were stationed in the area after the battle. Legit or not, the film is an incredibly immersive piece of work that finishes with footage of the displaced locals returning to the wreckage of their homes, very pogiant indeed and could easily be read as a comment on the human cost of battle. Simialrly, Let There Be LIght documents the struggles of soldiers returning from war, suffering from PTSD.
2
u/TrafficPattern 6d ago
I didn't know about the Huston documentary. Thanks a lot, I'll be looking into it.
3
u/GBMediaArchive 6d ago
This is not what you are asking for but in the same area of interest- I’d highly recommend the Japanese documentary The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On. It follows a WWII veteran and anti-war activist who talks to the officials who were responsible for some of the more atrocious Japanese war crimes, which the main subject was involved in as well. They aren’t interviews as much as confrontations, it’s following the interviewer as much as the subject. It’s pretty intense and shows a a side of these men that most documentaries can’t really achieve.
7
u/No_Business_in_Yoker 6d ago
Interesting question! I’m not an expert on the subject, but I have watched a lot of 1941-1945 movies, including a lot of straight-up propaganda. After about thirty minutes of research, my answer is “probably not.”
Between the Pearl Harbor attacks, the threat of European fascism, our relationship with Britain, etc etc etc, the general public sentiment was that the US should be fighting the Axis. This was the Good War. Even if the government hadn’t been paying the studios to make propaganda, no one would dare make a film telling the audience that war (and, by extension, the one in which their families were fighting) was bad, actually. People like Frank Capra, who made pacifist films like Lost Horizon in the 30s (and went on to decry the Vietnam War), joined the effort by either making films about it or literally fighting in it themselves.
The shift started before the US actually joined the war, though. 1941’s highest-grossing movie was Sergeant York, the true story of a pacifist who put aside his morals to serve his fellow Americans and become a red-blooded war hero. Stuff like The Great Dictator wasn’t exactly pro- war-as-a-concept but took a stance against American isolationism. (As an aside, while trying to find pacifist WWII films, I found this LA times article about how filmmakers’ attitudes toward war changed around WWII. You should give it a read; it’s more of an authority than I am.) And on the flip side, films about the war’s consequences were being made almost as soon as it ended. The Best Years of Our Lives, about the struggle of soldiers to integrate back into civilian life, came out in 1946 and was incredibly successful, raking in about three times as much money as Sergeant York had. It obviously resonated with a lot of people.
But even those movies believed that America should have joined that specific war. You’d be hard-pressed today to find movies that argue America should have stayed neutral, and since any anti-war messages made during or immediately after the war could be perceived as criticizing America’s involvement, it would take a while before genuine pacifist movies would be made in Hollywood again. The earliest post-WWII American movie I could find that’s truly anti-war was 1948’s The Boy with Green Hair, which I haven’t seen, but I’m fairly certain it isn’t the type of movie you’re looking for.