Specters of War: Hollywood's Engagement with Military Conflict

303 Pages·2012·3.243 MB·English

by  Elisabeth Bronfen

SPECTERS OF WAR

SPECTERS OF WAR
Hollywood’s Engagement
with Military Conflict
elisabeth bronfen
rutgers university press
New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bronfen, Elisabeth.
Specters of war : Hollywood’s engagement with military conflict / Elisabeth Bronfen.
p. cm.
Includes filmography.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8135-5398-6(hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8135-5397-9
(pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8135-5399-3(e-book)
1. War films—United States—History and criticism. I. Title.
PN1995.9.W3B76 2012
791.43(cid:2)6581—dc23
2011048992
A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.
Copyright © 2012by Elisabeth Bronfen
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission
from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New
Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S.
copyright law.
Visit our website: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu
Manufactured in the United States of America
To Isabel Capeloa Gil and Daniela Janser

Contents
Acknowledgments — ix
Introduction — 1
1 Unfinished Business of the Civil War — 16
Gangs of New York
Gone with the Wind
The Birth of a Nation
Major Dundee
Glory
Ride with the Devil
2 Home and Its Discontent — 43
Glamour Girls of 1943
Since You Went Away
Tender Comrade
Swing Shift
From Here to Eternity
The Deer Hunter
3 War Entertainment — 74
The Glenn Miller Story
Golddiggers of 1933
Footlight Parade
This Is the Army
Marlene Dietrich: Her Own Song
White Christmas
Apocalypse Now Redux
4 Choreography of Battle — 107
Let There Be Light
Normandy Invasion
The Longest Day
The Birth of a Nation
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Big Red One
Saving Private Ryan
Sands of Iwo Jima
Band of Brothers
viii Contents
5 Reporting the War — 144
Guadalcanal Diary
Back to Bataan
Battle of San Pietro
The Story of G.I. Joe
Full Metal Jacket
Standard Operating Procedure
6 Court-Martial Drama — 169
Paths of Glory
Judgment at Nuremberg
A Few Good Men
The Caine Mutiny
Rules of Engagement
7 War’s Sustained Haunting — 196
The Best Years of Our Lives
Key Largo
Somewhere in the Night
Act of Violence
Flags of Our Fathers
Miracle at St. Anna
Gran Torino
Conclusion — 233
Notes — 243
Selected Bibliography — 265
Filmography — 271
Index — 275
Acknowledgments
Conversations with others equally fascinated by the troubling interface between
Hollywood films and war were very much part of writing this book, and I want to
thank Isabel Capeloa Gil for the spirited intellectual exchange that took place while
this project was in its inaugural stages. Equal gratitude is due Daniela Janser for her
keen critical eye and her sustained support throughout the writing process. For her
seminal suggestions regarding the overall theoretical argument of the book, I want
to further thank Gesine Krüger. For individual pointers that ended up changing the
direction this project took, allowing me to fine tune my argument as well as insist-
ing on the inclusion of material I might otherwise have left out, I am grateful to
Garrett Stewart, Anton Kaes, David Slocum, Andreas Huyssen, Norbert Grob,
Griselda Pollock, Martin Jaeggy, Sermin Meskill, David Punter, Siegfried Weichlein,
Barbara Straumann, Emily Sun, Alexander Markin, and the astute Rutgers reader
who remains anonymous. On a more personal level, I want to express my debt to
my sister Susan, who helped me formulate the autobiographic impulse that has,
from the start, inscribed this undertaking. For his encouragement throughout and
his meticulous help with the illustrations, I want to thank Johannes Binotto. For her
help with copyediting, my thanks also go to Danielle Hickey. I am, as always, grate-
ful to the students who participated in diverse seminars on the subject of war and
cinema given at New York University, at the Catholic University of Lisbon, the
University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Zurich. They allowed me
to test many of my ideas before committing them to paper. A research leave
granted by my home institution made it possible for me to finish the manuscript in
good time, and for this I want to thank those colleagues who supported my appli-
cation, in particular Andreas Fischer, president of the University of Zurich, who
expressed his impatience at seeing the finished product, and to Daniel Wyler, dean
of research, for a generous grant. Finally, deep appreciation goes to Leslie Mitch-
ner, my editor at Rutgers University Press, for commentary that was always perti-
nent but above all for her persistence in seeing this project through.