Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World War II

Film and Culture Series

by Thomas Doherty

In this lively cultural history, Doherty demonstrates that wartime Hollywood was not a rigidly controlled propaganda machine, as is often assumed, but an ad-hoc collaborative effort between the government and film industry.

Genres: History, Film, Media Tie In, World War II, American History

376 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1993

Reviews

[Dan Sendker · Rating 2 out of 5]

If it takes me almost three months to get through a book about movies, I must not have liked it much. This one covered a lot of ground and was very informative, but the writing style was pretty grating. There were only fleeting references to Golden Age animation during WWII when there could have easily been a whole chapter. Worse of all, the author shows some unsettling biases against Japan in the final revised chapter. Still, the book had a lot going for it. I appreciated the chapters on Black soldiers and the depiction of women in film, and I learned a ton about American culture during WWII. Goodreads really needs to add half-star ratings. This is closer to a 2.5 for me.

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impressive book on all counts--the depth of research, the intelligence of the structure, the jokes and little nuggets of reference packed into the sentences, and the overall point that the "real war" came decently close to being on screen, certainly no more and no less than for earlier wars, and much more so than the 70s assaults on "WWII cinema" (as in Kovic's Born on the Fourth of July, where he specifically attacks John Wayne and Sands of Iwo Jima--or Jimo Shira, as a student once memorably rendered it in a paper--for lying to him about the Marines) that underpinned the sensibility of Vietnam movies. The funniest part is the catalogue of military-culture errors he notes in 70s films, because nobody involved had served and thus kept sticking in convenient but inaccurate bits.

It makes for an excellent double feature, or like 1.5 feature, since many stories are repeated, with the documentary Five Came Back, which reading this finally got me around to watching. Literally everything is in here--moving backwards, the role of newsreels and documentaries (tidbit: the now-common grammar of film going out-of-focus to reflect the power of an explosion was an accident that John Huston fought for) to create a fairly real version of reality; the limited and much-challenged inclusion of Japanese American and Black characters (which kept getting deleted in the South, leaving in scenes where characters go into a club to see Louis Armstrong, and then...cut: no Louis); the incorporation of female characters and war workers into new and old plots, along with the number of ghost stories featuring deceased but benevolent spirit guardians steering the young and confused from the afterlife; how to depict the German and Japanese enemies with the right balance of hate and support for the people; the necessity and difficulty of the change from the WWI-hangover atniwar aesthetic (I mean, I've shown The Big Parade in my US/Film class, so I knew all about this), with the sole exception of airborne films, which partook of the knights-of-the-air romance, and which also had to be consciously repurposed into celebrations of collective heroism (tidbit: the number of movies celebrating specific parts of the flight crew, not just the pilot, that resulted from an explicit directive to encourage enlistment and interest in a range of jobs in the Air Force, surprised me); the aesthetic/political balance between DC and Hollywood....Really, there are enough ideas and movie suggestions here for a six-month project. Definitely pushing me to finish his Hollywood-and-the-Nazis book, which feels like a prequel. And the extended closing section on 1990s WWII movies makes the essential point that the Private Ryan hype (they've never dared to put anything this realistic on screen before!) was, at that point, 70 years old.

It also got me to watch Mrs. Miniver, which, shamefully, I'd never seen, and Greyhound (Hanks again, steering a ship through the North Atlantic and numerous taunting sub attacks--prompting my wife to wonder how many times he'd put on a captain's hat onscreen). I may not do six months of this, but maybe I will actually read that copy of Guadalcanal Diary I have sitting around.

[Rachel Brune · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent look at the films Hollywood made during the war years, the relationship of Hollywood to the war department, as well as the context leading up to World War II, and the legacy that period of time left for future films of the 20th century and beyond. I recommend this book to students of military history, media, and where the two fields intersect.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very insightful book about WWII era films, particularly about the war. A couple of passing references to post-war science fiction suggests the author was out of his depth there, but it doesn't take away from the bulk of the material where he's on solid footing.