A paper by Prof.dr Luc Rasson for the First World War Seminar Series organised by In Flanders Fields Museum, Gateways to the First World War and the University of Kent.
This talk will focus on what has been called the “bifurcated vision” of the Great War in film. A movie taking place in the trenches will mostly describe the war as an absurd waste of young lives and, at least implicitly, advocate a pacifist attitude. However, films showing the war in the air will very often carry values of romantic heroism and chivalry and will not question the legitimacy of the war. These films seem to be impervious to a pacifist stance, even in the Thirties. The talk will focus on the first feature film made about the young air forces, William Wellman’s Wings (1925) and dwell on the trend of films about the air war in the Thirties.
Venue: Darwin Lecture Theatre 2, Darwin College, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, England, CT2 7NY
Full details of the First World War Seminar Series can be found here.
