perceptions of the nature of fighting on the western front. Over the
following decade, Hollywood produced several epics: The Four Horse-
men of the Apocalypse ( U.S., 1921), The Big Parade ( U.S., 1925), What
Price Glory ( U.S., 1926), and Wings ( U.S., 1927). In 1930, the powerful
antiwar film All Quiet on the Western Front used a combination of pictures
and sound to project an image of waste and hopelessness in modern,
industrialized warfare in the West. A decade later, much of that grim
image was overcome, or at least displaced, by a new faith in mechanized
and mobile warfare, to convince a subsequent generation to fight in
another world war.

World War II was a cinematic war. From the outset, governments and
national motion-picture industries used moving images -- newsreels, doc-
umentaries, and feature films -- to help mobilize populations for war. ² The
armed forces of every major nation employed photographers who used
lightweight 16-mm cameras to capture many aspects of the war (and
stage or reenact some others ³ ) to provide usable images for military and
civilian purposes.

Motion pictures provided an effective means of building unity in World
War II in part because audiences in urban, industrialized nations, such as
the United States, had become accustomed in the preceding decades to
going to movie theaters regularly as a way of obtaining information and
entertainment. By the 1940s, more than half of the potential American
audience went to the movies at least once a week. ⁴ In the interwar period,
particularly with the adoption of sound film technology in the late 1920s,
Hollywood refined its ability to produce films that delivered a message
while they entertained.

In World War II, the cinematic experience was shared by civilians and
combatants alike, as the mainly black-and-white films (and a few in color)
made during the conflict were seen by those at home as well as members
of the armed forces abroad. The experience crossed social and economic
lines. Indeed, the leaders of most of the major nations were all film
enthusiasts: Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler had per-
sonal projectionists and private screening rooms for nightly viewing of
dramatic and documentary films. ⁵

After 1945, filmmakers -- like novelists, historians, painters, and poli-
ticians-sought to represent and evaluate the war experience at home
and at the front as well as to use that experience to provide a guide to the
present. In the United States, the experience in a victorious war provided
the basis for numerous features, including A Walk in the Sun ( U.S., 1946),

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