Why Filmmakers Are Obsessed With World War II Movies Right NowIn a time of disillusionment and anxiety, nostalgia for the 1940s reveals our desire to visit a time and people of whom we could be proud.
By Catherine Katz
October 28, 2016
The Federalist (excerpted)As film critic David Ansen quipped, “We are the movies and the movies are us.” Hollywood both shapes and reflects the values, tastes and desires of American society.
Like a handsome man in uniform, World War II films never really go out of style. But today, we’re seeing a need to make WWII movies at a rate not seen since the immediate postwar period. This trend may be motivated in part by the desire to tell these stories before the Greatest Generation is but a memory. However, the rebirth of WWII’s most iconic moments on the silver screen is perhaps the result of changes in our national consciousness in the last half-decade, the period during which Hollywood studios green lit production on these films.
If it seems like every other movie trailer released these days shows people running around in fatigues, shirtwaist dresses, and Brylcreem, that’s because it’s true. There are an astounding number of movies about World War II slated for release between now and the end of 2017: seven at last count.
A WWII Film Trend Is Taking Over Movie Theaters
All the Hollywood headliners are getting on the troop train—Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Marion Cotillard, Andrew Garfield, Christopher Nolan, and Mel Gibson, to name a few. Even Tom Hanks is rumored to be fighting Nazis again, this time trading Army green for Navy blue in what would be an eighth World War II film in the works for this year.
In August, this World War II streak opened with “Anthropoid,” starring Jamie Dornan and Cillian Murphy, about Czech resistance fighters attempting to assassinate top Nazi Reinhard Heydrich in 1942. In November, Pitt and Cotillard return to screens in “Allied,” a supposedly true story of an ill-fated romance between spies in 1942 Casablanca.
November also features Gibson-directed “Hacksaw Ridge,” with Garfield as a conscientious objector-turned-medic, who received the Medal of Honor for bravery in the Battle of Okinawa. In 2017, Chastain and Daniel Brühl appear in “The Zookeeper’s Wife,” based on the true story of the Warsaw Zoo’s Director and his wife, who saved hundreds of Jews following Germany’s 1939 invasion of Poland. Rounding out the confirmed World War II films are a second telling of Operation Anthropoid, “HHhH,” this time starring Rosamund Pike and Jason Clarke, as well as Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk,” and “Darkest Hour” starring Gary Oldman as a steadfast Winston Churchill facing down the Nazi menace in 1940. ...
What distinguishes the 2016-2017 slate of films is that they focus on mainstream WWII subjects that have had little screen representation in recent years: major battles in the Pacific, espionage, the invasion of Poland, and resistance operations against Hitler’s inner circle. ...
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