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ENG 386 | Week 3 The Sad Art of War

Dates: 1914-1918 Troops killed: 5.5 million (Allied forces), 4.4M (Central Powers) Total killed: approx. 16.5 million worldwide

Horrifying Distinguishing Elements • Largest military loss of life to date, esp. among the young • Slow, paralyzing, trench warfare • Communication breakdown, especially the homefront • First fully mechanized war • The debut of tanks, aka trench busters • Battles for the superiority of the seas • The debut of German U-boats/submarines • Widespread use of chemical warfare • Widespread victims of “shell shock” (now called “PTSD”) • The “Great War” or the “War to End all Wars” …

The first four decades of the 20th century were artistically defined by experimentation. Now, most people simply speak of “modernism,” but back then different labels were used:

• Post-Impressionism • German Expressionism • Surrealism • Dadaism • (Italian) Vorticism • (French) Existentialism

All sought new forms for depicting modern reality, which was portrayed in subjective, non-realist ways—as dehumanizing, distorted, paranoid or chaotic.

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Dates: 1939-1945 Troops killed: 16 million (Allied forces), 8 million (Axis) Total killed: approx. 50 million worldwide

Horrifying Distinguishing Elements • Deadliest conflict in human history • Battles for the superiority of the skies • Blitzkriegs, all-night bombings, and fire-bombings • Human torture & medical experimentation which even German Expressionist film could never imagine • Concentration Camps, infanticide, genocide • Fiery Birth of the Atomic Age • The war everyone vowed “never to forget”

The Bhagavad-Gita, Physicist Robert Oppenheimer, Sacred Hindu Scripture Lead Scientist, The Manhattan Project, 16 July 1945, 5:30am 5 miles from Alamogordo, New Mexico

The horrors of war fundamentally changed the way people perceived experimentation – especially that which sought to distort, manipulate, and dehumanize the human body and reality.

The world had seen far too much of these things in concentration camps, and our concept of reality fared little better, having witnessed the effects of Nazi anti-Semitic propa- ganda and the horrifying Before and After Aerial Images, images of genocide and 6 August 1945 atomic incinerations.

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War and its Effects

A noticeable reaction against experiment set in—deriving directly from the attitude that experimental methods were politically irresponsible, bourgeois, and even dangerous. 1. What shifts in cinematic artistic sensibilities occur from the pre-war to post-war time-periods? Return to: traditional narration, linear plots, 2. How did war affect setting and characterization? realism (!), stable 3. How did war affect the ancient debate between characterization, etc. realism and expressionism … or objectivity and Rejection of: stream of subjectivity? consciousness, multiple 4. Aren’t you very, very appreciative that I chose perspectives, temporal/ tame images for these specific PowerPoint slides? chronological inversion, unreliable narrators, etc.

Holocaust Memorial, Berlin

Italian Neorealist films generally are:

• Socialist/Marxist in politics • Pseudo-documentary in style • Humanistic in sensibility The Quest for Inclusion • Exterior (often on-location) in setting • Conversational in speech • Emotional rather than abstract • Starkly realistic, and • Refuse to offer pat or propagandistic solutions to complex social problems

Italian Neorealist films reacted against the government Italy didn’t just need to rebuild its film industry, either. Like many propaganda that flourished under Benito Mussolini’s reign countries, it suffered during World War II, so the impoverished, (dictator from 1922-44). desperate, or destroyed landscapes you see were real, not constructed. The state then controlled the film industry and prohibited films about poverty or unemployment. By contrast, these are the chief subjects of Italian Neorealist films.

When Bicycle Thieves was released In 1948, approximately 25% (!) of the Italian workforce was unemployed.

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Italian Neorealism Faced with economic and political bleakness – ie. the loss of social support – people turned to each other and the church.

“..life has changed, the war is over, the cities have been reconstructed. What we needed was a cinema of Reconstruction.” 1. What political contexts helped give birth to this film -- Roberto Rossellini (director) movement? 2. Describe post-World War II life in Italy—one of the cultural capitals of the world. 3. Name some (or many!) of the characteristics of Italian Neorealism. 4. In what ways does Italian Neorealism blend elements of Marxist and Christian Humanism?

“My films are a struggle against the absence of human solidarity … against the indifference of society towards suffering. They are a word in favor of the poor and unhappy.” – Vittorio De Sica

Vittorio De Sica, 1948

“The Bicycle Thief is Everyman’s search for dignity – it is as though the soul of man had been filmed.

The Bicycle Thief is about a man, a worker, who must have a bike in 1952 1962 order to work at his job. He is desperate, pawns everything to regain his machine, goes to work, has the thing stolen from him 1. Bicycle Thieves (De Sica) 1. Citizen Kane (Welles) while his back is turned, and then goes on a search through Rome 2. City Lights (Chaplin) 2. L’avventura (Antonioni) to find it. 3. The Gold Rush (Chaplin) 3. Le Regle du jeu (Renoir) 4. Battleship Potemkin 4. Greed (von Stroheim) That is about all there is to it. (Eisenstein) 5. Ugetsu Monagatari But it happens to be very close 5. Intolerance (Griffith) 6. Battleship Potemkin to a lyrical masterpiece.” 6. Louisiana Story (Flaherty) (Eisenstein) 7. Greed (von Stroheim) 7. Bicycle Thieves -- Arthur Miller, author of 8. Le Jour se Leve (Carne) 8. Ivan the Terrible Death of a Salesman, etc. 9. Passion of Joan of Arc 9. La terra trema 10. Le Regle du jeu (Renoir) 10. L’Atalante

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1972 1982 • De Sica used no professional actors in this movie. Legend has it he hired the actors based on their walks. 1. Citizen Kane (Welles) 1. Citizen Kane (Welles) 2. Le Regle du jeu (Renoir) 2. Le Regle du jeu (Renoir) • Bruno, the boy, was reportedly just a kid De Sica saw walking 3. Battleship Potemkin 3. Seven Samurai (Kurosawa) down a Roman street. 4. 8 ½ (Fellini) 4. Singing in the Rain • Later in life, the actor who played 5. L’avventura (Antonioni) 5. 8 ½ (Fellini) Bruno would become a math teacher. 6. Persona (Bergman) 6. Battleship Potemkin 7. Passion of Joan of Arc 7. L’avventura (Antonioni) • In a late scene of the film, Bruno is 8. The General (Keaton) 8. Magnificent Ambersons almost hit by two cars. This was 9. Magnificent Ambersons (Welles) unscripted: they were filming in the (Welles) 9. Vertico (Hitchcock) streets of Rome and the cars 10. Wild Strawberries 10. The General (Keaton) unexpectedly drove by.

Bring it, Keulks – Briinnngg Ittt!

 Word-process a one-page, 250-350 word response to the following question:

What artistic functions does the character of Bruno play in the film? Would this film be as successful without him? Please focus on a specific scene or two to support your points.

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