As soon as cameras could take moving pictures of combat, war became a popular subject for narrative movies. Although no one can be certain of the exact "first" war movie, many historians feel it is probably a one-and-a-half-minute pro-war film, Tearing Down the Spanish Flag , made on a set in New York City immediately after the United States declared war on Spain in April 1898. The precedent was set. All the wars in American history have had stories told about them by Hollywood, although some wars are more popular than others. A relatively small number are based on the Revolutionary War, among them The Patriot (2000), staring Mel Gibson, and Revolution (1985), starring Al Pacino. The Civil War was a popular topic in silent film days, but because "the enemy is us," it has become a war used to tell stories about family conflicts ("brother against brother"), racial issues, or romances. Successful Civil War movies include The Birth of a Nation (1915), Gone with the Wind , The Red Badge of Courage (1951), The Horse Soldiers (1959), and Glory (1989).
World War I inspired such successful films as The Big Parade (1925), What Price Glory (made in 1926 and remade in 1952), Lilac Time (1928), Wings , Hell's Angels ,
Samuel Fuller is a key figure in the history of the American war film because his movies are shaped by his own experience in combat. Fuller became a crime reporter by the age of seventeen and moved to Hollywood to begin writing screenplays in 1936. He joined the army after World War II broke out, serving in the Sixteenth Regiment of the First Army Division ("the Big Red One"), receiving the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, and the Purple Heart. Fuller fought the full European war, from the African campaigns on through Sicily and Anzio to, ultimately, landing at Omaha Beach on D-Day. His combat experience became the seminal event of his life. No matter what settings his films take, they are all in some way about war. In Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le fou (1965), Fuller, appearing as himself, states his credo: "Film is like a battleground: love, hate, action, violence, death." Although other directors, such as Oliver Stone, have been in combat, it is fair to say that no other movie director served as long in the trenches as Fuller.
Fuller's war movies cover World War II ( Merrill's Marauders , 1962; the autobiographical The Big Red One , 1980), the Korean conflict ( The Steel Helmet , 1951; Fixed Bayonets , 1951), the Cold War ( Pickup on South Street , 1953; Hell and High Water , 1954), and an early presentation of the problems in Vietnam, concerning the French colonials versus the Viet-Minh rebels ( China Gate , 1957). He also made Verboten (1959, set in postwar Germany); House of Bamboo (1955), about a gang of ex-Army men who organize their criminality along military lines; and a story of the native American "wars," Run of the Arrow (1957). Only Merrill's Marauders (1962) is based on a true story, that of Brigadier General Frank D. Merrill, who commanded the first American infantrymen to fight in Asia, the 5437th Composite Group, who were trained as guerrillas to fight deep behind Japanese lines in Burma.
Fuller's war movies are presented in a distinctive visual style that may be described as combative, to the extent that they break cinematic rules. He shifts from rapid montages to lengthy camera movements, from closeups to long shots, from real locations to rear projections, and from objective to subjective points-of-view without first clearly establishing the original position. Perhaps the definitive statement regarding war movies was made by Fuller: "The only way you could … really let the audience feel what it's like is to fire live ammo over the heads of the people in the audience."
I Shot Jesse James (1949), The Steel Helmet (1951), Fixed Bayonets! (1951), Pickup on South Street (1953), House of Bamboo (1955), Run of the Arrow (1957), China Gate (1957), Forty Guns (1957), Verboten! (1959), Merrill's Marauders (1962), Shock Corridor (1963), The Naked Kiss (1964), The Big Red One (1980), White Dog (1982)
Fuller, Samuel. The Big Red One . New York: Bantam, 1980.
Fuller, Samuel, with Christa Lang Fuller and Jerome Henry Rudes. A Third Eye: My Tale of Writing, Fighting, and Filmmaking . New York: Knopf, 2002.
Garnham, Nicholas. Samuel Fuller . New York: Viking/London: British Film Institute, 1971.
Hardy, Phil. Sam Fuller . New York: Praeger, 1970.
Server, Lee. Sam Fuller: Film Is a Battleground: A Critical Study with Interviews, a Filmography and a Bibliography . Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland, 1994.
Jeanine Basinger
Stories of the Korean War include The Steel Helmet (1951), Fixed Bayonets! (1951), The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1955), and M*A*S*H . Vietnam movies, apart from The Green Berets , were seldom made during the war itself. Early examples include The Boys in Company C (1978), Go Tell the Spartans (1978), and two highly respected and influential films, The Deer Hunter (1978) and Apocalypse Now (1979). Other Vietnam films are
Platoon , Full Metal Jacket (1987), and We Were Soldiers (2002). War movies have been set in Grenada ( Heartbreak Ridge , 1986), the Persian Gulf ( Three Kings ; Jarhead , 2005), and Nigeria ( Tears of the Sun , 2003). A new war, the war of terrorism, has emerged in noncombat movies such as the Die Hard series with Bruce Willis (1988, 1990, and 1995), in which terrorist groups threaten various American settings. The terrorist movie first appeared in the 1970s with the French-Italian film, Nada (1974), in which left-wing terrorists kidnap the American ambassador to France, and Rosebud (1975), a story about Arab terrorists kidnapping a yacht to hold five wealthy young women as political hostages.
The popularity of the war movie has not diminished since the turn of the twenty-first century. In 2000 a World War II submarine movie was released ( U-571 ), and a Vietnam-era training camp movie, Tigerland , earned critical respect. The year 2001 brought Enemy at the Gates , about war-torn Stalingrad in 1942, Captain Corelli's Mandolin , set on a Greek island in World War I, and a successful television miniseries based on fact, Band of Brothers . Two movies about combat were huge boxoffice hits in 2001: Pearl Harbor , which once again recreated the events of 7 December 1941, and Black Hawk Down , based on the true story of the US Army Rangers and Delta Force soldiers sent to Somalia in 1993 to capture a local warlord's top lieutenants.
Certain directors have been associated with movies about war, among them John Ford (1894–1973), who served in the Navy, as well as George Stevens (1904–1975), John Huston (1906–1987), and William Wyler (1902–1981), all of whom made documentaries under combat circumstances while serving in the Signal Corps in World War II. Samuel Fuller (1912–1997) and Oliver Stone both experienced actual combat and have written, directed, and produced war films. Fuller fought in World War II in the infantry, and Stone did the same during Vietnam. Fuller's The Big Red One (1980) is about his own combat experience in World War II, and Stone's Platoon won the Best Picture Oscar ® in 1986. Other directors associated with the genre today include Steven Spielberg (b. 1946), who not only made the very popular Saving Private Ryan but also Empire of the Sun (1987), about a young boy's prisoner-of-war experience when Japan invades China, and Band of Brothers .
Stars whose images define the American wartime military presence include John Wayne (1907–1979), Henry Fonda (1905–1982), Robert Mitchum (1917–1997), and Dana Andrews (1909–1992), all of whom are associated with successful combat movies. Contemporary actors who have portrayed military men include Tom Hanks, Harrison Ford, Clint East wood, Bruce Willis, and Sylvester Stallone, who portrayed an ex-Green Beret in the Rambo movies (1982, 1985, and 1988), none of which actually took place during the Vietnam War.
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