In recent days, the topic of anti-fascist war films in the world has continued to be pushed onto the list of public opinion. This article is a quick overview of the development process of the world anti-fascist war films over the past 70 years.
The first 50 years of the 20th century were the era of high development of cinema as an emerging mass media and popular culture. It was precisely during this period of history that humanity was in turmoil and ethnic strife, which led to two world wars and the cold war and arms race between The East and the West that followed. Mankind's fears and fears about the tragedy of war have not disappeared with the disappearance of the two world wars, on the contrary, anti-war, anti-nuclear and the vision of world peace with it as the core have become the mainstream values of the world since the second half of the 20th century. Invisibly, this background has given great room for the development of war-themed films, making it a cultural carrier for human expression and catharsis of war anxiety, and making war films one of the most important conventional genres of world cinema in the 20th century.
Broadly speaking, anti-fascist films can be divided into two categories: military themes and non-military themes. Military themes usually focus on the army, soldiers or other armed personnel on the battlefield, directly presenting the military confrontation and conflict between patriots and invaders, justice and injustice. For example, "Desert Fox" (1951), "The Longest Day" (1962), etc.; non-military war films usually aim to reproduce the life encounters and emotional changes of unarmed people and civilians in war environments. The most famous examples are the Italian film master Robert Rossellini's war trilogy "Rome, the Undefended City" (1945), "Fire of War" (1946) and "German Zero" (1948), as well as "Casablanca" (1942), "Reading Life and Death" (2008) and other classic business cards that are familiar to audiences in various countries.
Rome, an undefended city
War
German Zero Year
Casablanca
Life and death read aloud
The harsh reality of war is like a stone thrown in the water to the art of cinema, which must stir up ripples. The larger and heavier the real stone mass, the larger and longer the ripples stirred up in the water. With the passage of time, the historical trajectory of the world's anti-fascist war films, like ripples in the water, has gradually spread from small to large, gradually spreading, and deriving a treasure trove of films with complex varieties, diverse types and rich themes, creating a peak of aesthetics for contemporary world cinema.
With "reloading" and genre crossover, the genre definition and image paradigm of war films are constantly refreshed
Dunkirk
As early as the 1930s and 1940s, war films had become one of the mainstream commercial genres in Hollywood. Since the second half of the 20th century, filmmakers from all over the world have continuously changed their perspectives of observation and capture with the help of extensive excavation and in-depth interpretation of war materials, and under the impetus of continuous improvement of film technology, they have played triumphant songs all the way in the global market, and have contributed to "Tiger! tiger! tiger! (1970), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Pearl Harbor (2001), Letter from Iwo Jima (2006), Hacksaw Ridge (2016), Dunkirk (2017), Battle of Midway (2019) and other famous works have been named "War Blockbusters". Coupled with the Soviet Union's "Liberation" (1971), "Siege" (1975), "Moscow Defense Battle" (1985), "Stalingrad" (2013), Japan's "War and Man" series (1970-1973), China's "Hundred Regiments War" (2015), South Korea's "Taiji Flag Flying" (2004) and other classic films, for a time the scenery is unlimited, and it is a grand view. Over the years, these film history classics have constantly refreshed the genre definition and image paradigm of war films, and both in terms of narrative structure and audiovisual language, they are increasingly moving towards an aesthetic dimension that is called "large volume", "panoramic" and "epic". It seems that if the scene is not grand, the structure is not complicated, the field of vision is not broad, the emotion is not fierce, and the audiovisual effect is not shocking, it is not enough to reproduce the hardships and magnificence of the war scene. This orientation has created a new trend of so-called "rearmament" for contemporary war films.
Pearl Harbor
Hacksaw Ridge
Biographical films are also one of the common genres of war representation. For example, people are familiar with "General Patton" (1970), "The King's Speech" (2010), "Imitation Game" (2014) and "Darkest Hour" (2017). Traditionally, biographical films have deliberately highlighted a heroic view of history to portray key or leading figures in warfare. Presenting their unique personalities, extraordinary will, superhuman wisdom and inner struggles as a breathtaking psychological spectacle, the audience will have a kind of admiration and reverence for the mountains. In recent years, with the improvement of film narrative skills, character shaping is becoming more and more complex and refined, and the tall and comprehensive character expression methods of the past have been abandoned, and the hero has returned to secular humanity. Although the personality is still flamboyant, the emotional intelligence and intelligence are still outstanding, but what fascinates the audience more is obviously the seven passions and six desires in them like you and me, and even more cowardice, anxiety, wandering and fear than you and me. However, there is no suspense that before the end of the plot, you will definitely see the real difference between a hero and a coward, who will eventually overcome anxiety and redeem himself, while the coward will only continue to sink. Therefore, some people say that contemporary hero shaping relies on "reversal" rather than "elevation".
The King's Speech
General Patton
Darkest hours
There is also a popular genre of war films, which is war comedy. For example, Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" (1940), Liu Beiqian's "You Run Away and I Flee" (1942); France's "Tiger's Mouth Escape" (1966), "The King of Kings" (1982), and the domestic comedies "Sanmao From the Army" (1992), "Desperate Circumstances" (1994) and "Raise Your Hand" (2003) that came out under his influence. Common sense, war means sadness, pain, and sorrow, and seems to be at odds with comedy. The use of comedy to carry the blackness and thickness of war often requires a strong positive energy that can transcend sadness and trauma. Therefore, comedy is regarded as the art of the strong and the victorious. Only by pulling out of the quagmire of sorrow can life stride forward.
The docking of comedy and war films belongs to the cross-border integration of genres. Perhaps this is the secret of the long-lasting prosperity and continued prosperity of contemporary war films. With the passage of time, the wounds of war are healing, and the pain of the soul is also decreasing. The cross-border integration of war films with other film genres has become the best focus of today's film to seek innovative breakthroughs. Thus, we see "Pan's Labyrinth" (2006), which integrates war films with fantasy and fairy tales; "Boy in Striped Pajamas" (2008), which integrates with children's films; and "Jojo's Whimsical World" (2019), which integrates with children's films and comedies. What's more, there are eye-catching bizarre genres such as the "Snow of Death" series (2009-2014), "Frankenstein Corps" (2013) and the most recent "Ghosts of War" (2020), which are mixed and matched with genres such as thrillers, horrors, and even nonsense. Some people have compared the existing cultural accumulation of movies to a circle. What filmmakers have to do today is to try their best to expand its boundaries outward and seek more possibilities for film creation. The cross-border integration of genres is an engine that drives the continuous expansion of film boundaries.
Jojo's whimsical world
Jump out of the genre mode, highlighting the individualization and creative thinking diversity of film art
Hollywood genre films follow an intensive model similar to the Ford assembly line. It always provides consumers with some kind of perfect and fixed consumption routine, like paving the way for trams to avoid the potential risk of derailment and overturning in the market. In the context of Western culture, this set of paths also alludes to a narrative archetype of a so-called "biblical story", which is good at transforming the enemy and us in any war into the ultimate opposition between good and evil; or shaping the protagonist of the righteous side into a creation hero who saves the world from the hands of demons. The cohesion routine is to simplify thinking and facilitate consumption. However, over time, the routine itself will also evolve into a stereotypical mode of creation and a mental imprisonment, which restricts and hinders the filmmaker's artistic attempt to expand the edge and innovate. Therefore, jumping out of the genre model and highlighting the individualization and creative thinking diversity of film art has become another way for anti-fascist films in the contemporary world to seek new changes. Film master David Lane's Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) is an example of this. Although the film is also based on the historical facts of World War II, it continues the aesthetic purpose of the collision of Eastern and Western cultures that the master has always paid attention to. It not only gives the film a value orientation of cultural reflection, but also makes its style branded with a personal imprint of the author's film".
In the 1950s and 1980s, this trend of "de-genre" or "authorization" gradually became apparent in the international film world, and there were successive innovations such as "Soldier's Song" (1959), "Ivan's Childhood" (1962), "Tin Drum" (1979), "Lily Marlene" (1981) and so on. As a result, war films broke free from the shackles of the Hollywood commercial genre, liberated from the archetypal routine of "heroes save lives", and were given a profound critical nature of reality in the cultural, philosophical, and political senses.
Tin drums
In recent years, the well-known Shameless Bastards (2009), The Labyrinth of Silence (2014) and The Woman in Gold (2015) have been drawn along this "de-typed" and "authorization" direction. "The Labyrinth of Silence" and "The Woman in Gold" both belong to the critical reflections made by european and American insights in the face of World War II and anti-Semitic history. The former calls on contemporary German society to bravely unseal its memories, face up to its unbearable history, and take the initiative to assume the judicial and moral responsibilities left over from the war; the latter contains a pragmatic view of history of "refusing to forget but should let go of hatred" to help those who have suffered from the poison of war to obtain spiritual healing from painful memories. Such films not only provide a civilized dimension for contemporary human society, but also remind the international community in an anthropological sense how to cope with the challenges of future and harmonious coexistence. Their value has long since transcended the box of cinematic art or aesthetics itself and should be regarded as an integral part of the history of ideas.
Shameless bastard
However, the market is harsh. Just as even delicious food has to face the test of consumers' taste buds, these artistic achievements in the value of culture, ideology and art have their own gains, but sometimes have to face the embarrassing situation of not being accepted by consumers. After all, large-scale wars have left us, and the wounds of war are also healing at an accelerated pace. Today's mainstream population, especially the younger generation that most often patronizes theaters, has a certain general numbness and bluntness in how to view and perceive war. This objective reality requires filmmakers to re-seek solutions from the aesthetic mechanism of film. As a result, we see a kind of plot that can be called a "generational narrative" to bring into the way. For example, the Japanese films "Forever Zero" (2013) and "Little Home" (also translated as "Tokyo Cottage", 2014) have invariably used the popular traffic stars of that time as the backtracks of historical stories. They do not assume the narrative function of personality development in the main plot line, but only as a narrator of the same age as the audience, who is external to the story, bringing distant and strange war legends into the eyes of today's young generation of audiences, in order to minimize the strangeness between the plot and the audience. It should be said that this change is necessary because it involves a "refusal to forget" cultural sacrifice that can help the younger generation effectively salvage the precious memories that are being scattered.
Constantly promote the perceptual revolution of audiovisual language and become a staunch defender of the big screen
At the beginning of 2020, an unforeseen encounter broke out between human society and the COVID-19 pandemic. The film industry was hit hard, and cinema screening came to a standstill. People flock to streaming platforms because they can't walk into theaters, which has sparked a heated discussion about whether online screenings will replace traditional cinema screenings. As the movie-watching boom brought about by the resumption of cinema work shows, while people turn their attention to emerging movie viewing models such as "cloud movies", they should not ignore the traditional cinema's response to competition from streaming media. Just as takeaway is more suitable for snacks, while restaurants are more suitable for meals. Between the old and new "online movies" and "cinema movies", there will inevitably be the choice and emphasis on different types of films.
For war films, the increasingly powerful cinema audiovisual effects can obviously provide a more suitable projection effect and viewing environment than computers, tablets, and mobile phone screens. In 2012, Dolby introduced a 128-channel Atoms sound system that provides audiences with immersive sound in front, rear, left and right three-dimensional surrounds in the auditorium. Hacksaw Ridge was one of the first films to use the Dolby Atmos system to interpret a realistic battlefield atmosphere. When the audience is in the hall and feels the roar of guns passing behind them and overhead, people will realize that this superb sensory experience brought about by the revolution in projection technology is the real charm of the traditional theater to crush the mobile screen.
The rapid development of film technology will inevitably bring about an aesthetic transformation in the creation of war films. The recently released World War I film "1917" (2019), based on the digital post-simulation of "one shot to the end", set up a hypothetical presence line of sight for the audience, allowing them to follow the two small soldiers in the plot, gradually crossing the forward position, going deep into the depth of the enemy camp, and experiencing the tension on the battlefield with the characters. Compared with traditional films that focus on narrative charm and personality, the "one shot to the end" of this film is obviously more focused on creating a realistic "immersive" experience for the audience. Perhaps it does not care much about the in-depth excavation of the complexity of the characters, nor does it pay much attention to the exquisite and delicate structure of the plot, its purpose is to push the audience deep into the "presence" of the plot, so that they and the characters can share the battlefield atmosphere of life and death without any distance. It directly appeals to the audience's sensory experience, and is not committed to the guidance and awakening of the viewer's intellect and speculation like traditional films. Some scholars have named it "experiential film" for this reason, and regard it as a "perceptual revolution" for the self-redemption of big-screen movies in the streaming media era.
1917
The revolution also took place behind the scenes of films like Billy Lynn's Halftime Battle (2016) and World War II-themed Dunkirk (2017). The reason why Ang Lee was willing to take huge commercial risks was to try to shoot "Billy Lynn's Halftime Battle" at a high frame rate of 120fps and 4K and 3D technology, according to his own words, the purpose was to guide the audience to change the attitude of watching the movie: to make them from off-screen viewers to direct participants in the plot. Between the audience and the screen, there is no longer a distance between "I" and "he", so that the boundary between "subjective" and "objective" in traditional films can be eliminated in highly realistic audiovisual effects and sensory experiences. Dunkirk director Christopher Nolan also showed an aesthetic attempt similar to Ang Lee, for this great experiment, he did not hesitate to abandon the mature narrative experience that traditional films have been hard to construct, instead of explaining to the audience the causes and consequences of things, nor interpreting the ins and outs of the characters, and even compressing the dialogue into a very simple few words. In Nolan's hands, the temporal and spatial structure of the traditional film linear narrative is like a pile of blocks that have been dismantled and rebuilt by children. He let different time and space overlap each other, let the plot intersect with each other, and let the camera's vision change like a kaleidoscope. The aim is to get off-screen audiences out of the 21st century movie environment and back to the wars of the 1940s.
Some people may complain that Nolan's films are too subversive, but his attitude is very clear, allowing the story-based plots of "Game of Thrones" and "House of Cards" to dominate television and streaming! Leave theaters and giant screens to "pure cinema". According to our understanding, Nolan means that just like the eight hundred heroes who stuck to the Sihang warehouse, war movies, including anti-fascist films, should also rely on the progress of film technology to become the staunch defenders of traditional cinema screening with its own unique image language and audiovisual charm.
Billy Lynn's midfield battle
Author: ISHIKAWA (Professor of Shanghai Theater Academy, Vice Chairman of Shanghai Filmmakers Association)
Editor: Zhou Minxian
Images are synthesized from the web