THE AMERICAN WAR FILM: HOLLYWOOD GOES TO WAR

CTL #120

2 units

Thursday 7 – 8:15 pm

Enrollment limit 12

Grading: P/NC option

John Bravman

Andrew Dimock

Web Site: http://www.stanford.edu/class/ctl120

Discussion Forum: http://panfora.stanford.edu/Forums/ctl120

What does Saving Private Ryan tell us about our picture of American history? How did American combat films of the late 1970s and the 1980s refight the Vietnam War? What makes combat such an attractive subject for filmmakers? Can any film give us a glimpse of the experience of battle? What makes a war movie an “anti-war” film?

Hollywood films shape the American moviegoing audience’s perception of war’s reality in powerful ways. Some war movies inspire patriotism and a sense of national purpose, while others mount bitter attacks on the human costs of conflict and question its necessity. Through film, Americans have celebrated their wartime victories and struggled to justify their disasters.

This course surveys the development of the American war film as a genre. We will introduce basic terms central to the study of film as a medium and provide some models for critical analysis. We will also trace the rise and decline of the “antiwar” film, and question its status. One of the aims of the class will be to draw attention to the way that films are not contained within the historical moments they depict: they reflect the aesthetic and political currents of the contemporary moment in which they are written, filmed, and viewed.

Requirements

Attendance at weekly seminar meetings.

Students will be assigned short readings from introductory film studies textbooks and critical journals, and they will post written responses weekly to the course’s Panfora discussion site. (Postings due Sundays at midnight.) The responses will take the form of reactions and observations about the film screenings and discussions. The readings will be held to approximately twenty pages per week.

One brief meeting, mid-quarter, in office hours, to review level of participation.

Each student will sign up to do a brief 5-8 minute oral presentation at one of the weekly meetings. This assignment will help the students prepare for the major requirement of the course, a 20-minute oral presentation to the class in the final weeks of the quarter. The project will be an analysis of a film or films, chosen by the student, which relate to the themes of the course. A 2-4 page prospectus will be approved by the instructor in advance. Students will be required to work with the Freshman-Sophomore College’s Oral Communications instructors in preparation.

Each student will screen the DVD Visions of Light, an introduction to cinematography, as a reserve assignment.

The readings will be available in a photocopy packet. They include excerpts from:

American Cinema/American Culture (John Belton, 1994)

Film Art: An Introduction (ed. David Bordwell, 1997)

The World War II Combat Film: Anatomy of a Genre (Jeanine Basinger, 1986)

Thursday, April 3rd

Introduction: “O, for a Muse of Fire…”

Henry V (director Laurence Olivier, 1944)

Henry V (Kenneth Branagh, 1989)

Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915)

Tearing Down the Spanish Flag (1898)

Shoulder Arms (Charlie Chaplin, 1918)

Screening: Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick, 1957)

4/10

The War to End All Wars

J’accuse (Abel Gance, 1919)

The Battle of the Somme (1916)

The Big Parade (King Vidor, 1925)

All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone, 1930)

Sergeant York (Howard Hawks, 1941)

Screening: Bataan (Tay Garnett, 1943)

4/17

The Good War

Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl, 1934)

Why We Fight (Frank Capra, 1942-5)

The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946)

Twelve O’Clock High (Henry King, 1949)

The Sands of Iwo Jima (Allan Dwan, 1949)

Screening: Das Boot (The Boat : German, dir. Wolfgang Petersen, 1981)

4/24

WWII

The Longest Day (Ken Annakin, 1962)

Patton (Franklin Schaffner, 1970)

Screening: Saving Private Ryan (Spielberg, 1998)

5/1

WWII

Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981)

Empire of the Sun (Spielberg, 1987)

Schindler’s List (Spielberg, 1995)

Screening: Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

5/8

The Cold War

Steel Helmet (Samuel Fuller, 1951)

Fail-Safe (Sidney Lumet, 1964)

The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962)

M.A.S.H. (Robert Altman, 1972)

Red Dawn (John Milius, 1984)

Screening: Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)

5/15

The War America Lost, or the Televised War

The Green Berets (John Wayne, 1968)

Full Metal Jacket (Stanley Kubrick, 1987)

Hamburger Hill (John Irvin, 1987)

Network TV coverage of the Tet Offensive, 1968

Screening: Regret to Inform (Barbara Sonnenborn, 1999)

5/22

Documentary War

The Anderson Platoon (Pierre Schoendorffer, 1970)

Three Seasons (in Vietnamese: Timothy Bui, 1999)

Screening: Three Kings (David O. Russell, 1999)

5/29

New World Order

Courage Under Fire (Edward Zwick, 1996)

Black Hawk Down (Ridley Scott, 2001)

Ambush at Mogadishu (PBS/Frontline)

6/5

Final Presentations

Suggested films for further study:

Pre-20^th Century

Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915)

The General (Buster Keaton, 1927)

Alexander Nevsky (in Russian: Sergei Eisenstein, 1938)

Gone With the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939)

Henry V (Laurence Olivier, 1944)

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (John Ford, 1949)

The Red Badge of Courage (John Huston, 1951)

The Seven Samurai (in Japanese: Akira Kurosawa, 1954)

The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)

The Alamo (John Wayne, 1960)

Zulu (Cy Endfield, 1963)

Little Big Man (Arthur Penn, 1970)

Breaker Morant (Bruce Beresford, 1980)

Ran (in Japanese: Akira Kurosawa, 1985)

Henry V (Kenneth Branagh, 1989)

Glory (Edward Zwick, 1989)

Last of the Mohicans (Michael Mann, 1992)

Gettysburg (Ronald Maxwell, 1993)

Ride With the Devil (Ang Lee, 2001)

The Patriot (Mel Gibson, 2001)

WWI

Shoulder Arms (Charlie Chaplin, 1918)

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Rex Ingram, 1921)

The Battleship Potemkin (in Russian: Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)

The Big Parade (King Vidor, 1925)

Wings (William Wellman, 1927)

Dawn Patrol (Howard Hawks, 1930)

All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone, 1930)

Westfront 1918 (in German: G.W. Pabst, 1930)

The Lost Patrol (John Ford, 1934)

Grand Illusion (in French: Jean Renoir, 1937)

Sergeant York (Howard Hawks, 1941)

Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962)

Oh! What a Lovely War (Richard Attenborough, 1969)

Gallipoli (Peter Weir, 1981)

Life and Nothing But (in French: Bertrand Tavernier, 1989)

Regeneration (Gillies Mackinnon, 1997)

Capitaine Conan (in French: Bertrand Tavernier, 1999)

WWII

The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin, 1940)

Air Force (Howard Hawks, 1940)

Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)

Sahara (Zoltan Korda, 1943))

Guadalcanal Diary (Lewis Seiler, 1943)

The Battle of San Pietro (documentary; John Huston, 1944)

Since You Went Away (John Cromwell, 1944)

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (Mervyn LeRoy, 1944)

Rome, Open City (Roberto Rossellini, 1945)

Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress (documentary; 1944)

Memphis Belle (drama; Michael Caton-Jones, 1990)

Let There Be Light (documentary; John Huston, 1945)

They Were Expendable (John Ford, 1945)

Objective, Burma! (Raoul Walsh, 1945)

The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946)

A Walk in the Sun (Lewis Milestone, 1946)

Battleground (William Wellman, 1949)

The Sands of Iwo Jima (Allan Dwan, 1949)

Twelve O’Clock High (Henry King, 1949)

The African Queen (John Huston, 1951)

Stalag 17 (Billy Wilder, 1953)

The Caine Mutiny (Edward Dmytryk, 1954)

Night and Fog (in French: Alain Resnais, 1955)

The Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean, 1957)

South Pacific (Joshua Logan, 1958)

Run Silent, Run Deep (Robert Wise, 1958)

Hiroshima, Mon Amour (in French: Alain Resnais, 1959)

The Guns of Navarone (J. Lee Thompson, 1961)

Judgment at Nuremberg (Stanley Kramer, 1961)

The Longest Day (Ken Annakin, 1962)

Closely Watched Trains (in Czech: Jiri Menzel, 1966)

Patton (Franklin Schaffner, 1970)

Catch-22 (Mike Nichols, 1970)

The Sorrow and the Pity (in French: Marcel Ophuls, 1971)

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (in Italian: Vittoriio De Sica, 1971)

The Execution of Private Slovik (Lamont Johnson, 1974)

A Bridge Too Far (Richard Attenborough, 1977)

Nineteen Forty-One (Steven Spielberg, 1979)

The Big Red One (Samuel Fuller, 1980)

The Wannsee Conference (in German: Heinz Schirk, 1984)

Empire of the Sun (Steven Spielberg, 1987)

A Midnight Clear (Keith Gordon, 1992)

Schindler’s List (Steven Spielberg, 1995)

Stalingrad (in German: 1997)

The Thin Red Line (Terence Malick, 1999)

Pearl Harbor (Michael Bay, 2001)

Band of Brothers (series; producer Steven Spielberg, 2001)

Wartime caper films:

The Great Escape (John Sturges, 1963)

The Dirty Dozen (Robert Aldrich, 1967)

Kelly’s Heroes (Brian Hutton, 1970)

Coming of age in wartime:

Hope and Glory (John Boormann, 1987)

Au Revoir Les Enfants (in French: Louis Malle, 1987)

Europa, Europa (in German: Agnieszka Holland, 1991)

Propaganda films:

Triumph of the Will (in German: Leni Riefenstahl, 1934)

Why We Fight (series produced by Frank Capra, 1942-5)

The Korean War

Steel Helmet (Samuel Fuller, 1951)

The Bridges at Toko-Ri (Mark Robson, 1955)

Pork Chop Hill (Lewis Milestone, 1959)

All the Young Men (Hall Bartlett, 1960)

M*A*S*H* (Robert Altman, 1970)

The Cold War

On the Beach (Stanley Kramer, 1959)

The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962)

Fail-Safe (Sidney Lumet, 1964)

The Russians Are Coming (Norman Jewison, 1966)

The Atomic Café (Kevin Rafferty, 1982)

Testament (Lynne Littman, 1983)

Red Dawn (John Milius, 1984)

Threads (Mick Jackson, 1985)

The Hunt for Red October (John McTiernan, 1990)

The Vietnam War

The Green Berets (John Wayne, 1968)

The Anderson Platoon (in French: 1970)

The Boys in Company C (Sidney Furie, 1977)

Go Tell the Spartans (Ted Post, 1978)

Coming Home (Hal Ashby, 1978)

The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino, 1978)

Birdy (Alan Parker, 1984)

Platoon (Oliver Stone, 1987)

Full Metal Jacket (Stanley Kubrick, 1987)

Hamburger Hill (John Irvin, 1987)

Born on the Fourth of July (Oliver Stone, 1989)

84 Charlie Mopic (Patrick Duncan, 1989)

In-Country (Norman Jewison, 1989)

Casualties of War (Brian de Palma, 1989)

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (Eleanor Coppola, 1991)

Three Seasons (in Vietnamese: Timothy Bui, 1999)

We Were Soldiers (Randall Wallace, 2002)

The Quiet American (2003)

Post-Vietnam

First Blood (Ted Kotcheff, 1982)

Rambo: First Blood, Part II (George Cosmatos, 1985))

Under Fire (Roger Spottiswoode, 1983)

The Killing Fields (Roland Joffe, 1984)

Missing in Action (Joseph Zito, 1984)

Top Gun (Tony Scott, 1986)

Salvador (Oliver Stone, 1986)

Courage Under Fire (Edward Zwick, 1996)

Wag the Dog (Barry Levinson, 1997)

No Man’s Land (in Serbo-Croatian: 2001)

Black Hawk Down (Ridley Scott, 2002)