War, Cinema and History. Prisoners of War in 20th Century Conflicts

Abstract

Since the first films were created, the will of filmmakers to represent the History on the screen has been a constant. War, as a regular and important event, repeated constantly through History, would be one of the main motifs used in movies. Among those war films, the stories of prisoners would be a useful resource to develop a discourse about the conflict, since there, the “good” and the “bad” side of the tale can be clearly shown through the characters imprisoned and the keepers. If we focus on the 20 th century, there are three wars that have been the object of several filmic creations: World War I, World War II and Vietnam War. In this text, we are going to summarize some films, which tell us the stories of prisoners of war during those three conflicts, and through them we are going to think over the relationship between these films and the academic History. With Jean Renoir´s La Grande Illusion, a film about World War I, we will see, apart of the historical reading of the movie, that the interpretations of a film can change over time. Through the stories about World War II, Stalag 17 by Billy Wilder and Unbroken by Angelina Jolie, we would learn about the shift that the treatment of prisoners of war suffered during WWII: from standard of correctness to widespread mistreatment. Rescue Dawn, finally, would confirm that shift, emphasized during the Cold War and specially present on the Vietnam War that is the setting for this film made by Werner Herzog. This movie, otherwise, could be placed into the American narrative created along the Cold War, in which the tales about the Vietnam War are ever¬present, even if there are more evident examples on other films. Through the cultural products developed within this narrative there was the will to present the United States as the “good guys”, the guarantors of democracy and defenders of freedom. This kind of creations would be, precisely, one of the major utilities of films, to create a discourse through which a certain cultural consciousness is spread.