1. Film and the representations of WWI

2. Historiography of WWI
Problems & Questions
Methods
Interpretations

3. Historiographical configurations
Military and Diplomatic
Social and Economic
Cultural and Anthropological
Jay Winter and Antoine Prost, The Great War in history : debates and controversies, 1914 to the present (Cambridge - New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

4. Historiographical configurations
Cultural
Comparative
Public
Centrality of
memory and representations

5. The cinema in 1914 Entertainment, news, and romance! Popular medium
Newsreel
Movies
Mixed venues
Popular medium
5,000 cinemas in the UK
Working-class audiences
Suspicion among the elites

6. Showing the war Film and propaganda Ambiguous response:
Britain Prepared, 1915
The Battle of the Somme, 1916
“The public should see these pictures that they may have some ideas of what the army is doing and what it means.” George V
German response: Bei unseren Helden an der Somme (With our heroes on the Somme), 1917
Ambiguous response:
“We are not showing ‘The Battle of the Somme’. This is a place of amusement, not a chamber of horrors."

7. Filming the war How to depict the modern battlefield? Rear sections
“As experience has shown, filming under fire does not create as powerful an impact as good staging”, P. K. Novitskii
Rear sections
Preparations for and impact of battle
Staged scenes
Official army section: Section cinématographique des armées, 1917

8. Filming the war The front The home front
La revanche des Français devant Verdun (1916)
Battaglia da Plava al Mare (1917)
Pershing’s Crusaders (1918)
The home front
La Femme française pendant la guerre (1917)
Mrs John Bull Prepared (1918)

9. Film and patriotic mobilization
Art and business
Cecil B. DeMille: The Kaiser, the beast of Berlin (1918); Joan the Woman (1917)
Charlie Chaplin: The Bond (1918)

10. Escaping the war Fantômas (1914) Ultus: The Man from the Dead (1916)
Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray (1917)

11. Film and the memory of the war
Telling the story of the war
La Belgique Martyre (1919)
With Lawrence in Arabia (1919)
Critique of the war
J’accuse, (1919) Abel Gance
Journey’s End (UK) /All Quiet on the Western Front (USA), 1930 / Wooden Crosses (1931)
La Grande Illusion (1937), Jean Renoir

12. Film and the memory of the war
A critique of contemporary wars
Paths of Glory (1957) S. Kubrick
King and Country (1964)
Oh! What a Lovely War (1969)
Impact on soldiers and civilians
Johnny Got His Gun (1971), based on novel by Donald Trumbo (1939)
La Vie et rien d’autre (1989)
Film and literature
Capitaine Conan (1996) - Vercel; Un long dimanche de fiançailles (2004) – Japrisot; Regeneration (1997) - Pat Barker; La chambre des officiers (2000) - Dugain

13. Film and the memory of the war
The First World War and national identity
Australia: Gallipoli (1981), The Light Horsemen (1987)
Canada: Passchendaele (2008)
The First World War and European reconciliation
Joyeux Noël (2005) France, Belgium, UK, Germany, Romania