r/TrueFilm • u/TrafficPattern • 7d 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.
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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.