In 1929 Mary Borden published The Forbidden Zone, a book of poems and short stories drawn from her experiences as a volunteer nurse with the French Army. The title referred to ‘the strip of land immediately behind the zone of fire’ where she worked. In 1930 Rebecca West wrote four monthly instalments for Cosmopolitan about her experiences as a nurse on the Western front under the title "War Nurse: An American Woman on the Western Front.” This popular series drew the attention of MGM’s Irving Thalberg and resulted in War Nurse, released in November of 1930. The following year another war nurse film, The Mad Parade, was produced by minor production company Liberty. Both films were scenarios based on the experiences of frontline nurses adapted and/or written by women. This paper will examine the particular challenges that war subjects presented for these scriptwriters both in terms of their representation of the horrors of war, and in terms of the cultural myths which circulated in this period around the role nurses played (or were supposed to have played) during the war.
Michael Hammond is Associate Professor in Film at the University of Southampton. He is the author of The Big Show: British Cinema Culture and The Great War (Exeter University Press 2006). He is co-editor with Dr. Michael Williams of Silent British Cinema and the Great War (Palgrave/MacMillan 2013). His current research is concerned with the impact of the Great War on the aesthetic practices of the Hollywood studios between 1919-1939.
Venue: Conference Room, Town Hall (2nd floor), Cloth Hall, Grote Markt 34, 8900 Ieper.
In Flanders Fields Museum, Gateways to the First World War and the University of Kent organize a series of eight seminars, accessible to all. Full details of all the seminars are available here.
