Scan barcode
A review by stanley_nolan_blog
The Fatal Alliance: A Century of War on Film by David Thomson
2.0
READ THE FULL REVIEW HERE
THE FILM industry of the nineteen-thirties hadn’t explored the war-film sub-genre as much as the gangster-film. The Big Parade (1925) by King Vidor walked so that All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) could win Outstanding Production (Best Picture) at the third Oscar Awards. The former received $20 million at the box office from a sub-$400 thousand budget, and, according to David Thomson in his new book, The Fatal Alliance: A Century of War on Film, “may be the most influential war movie ever made. Its mix of battle and romance (and box office) would be crucial. A genre was established.” More than that, it helped solidify MGM as a prominent studio and proved that war films could be massively profitable. But Thomson criticizes the naivety of Vidor and his use of unrealistic aesthetics for effect. Never mind that this was the first of its kind in an industry invented thirty years prior. He prefers Virginia Woolf’s influence of WW1 on the character of Septimus Warren Smith in Mrs. Dalloway, or Robert Graves’s memoir about being wounded on the Somme, as if literature (a medium he inherently privileges without qualifiers) provides an insight into explorations of interiority while cinema explores exteriority, a concept new for cinema (remember, thirty years old, versus literature, which is…much older).
Thomson then moves on to All Quiet. It was adapted from the novel by Erich Maria Remarque, a former Imperial German soldier who wanted to write an early entry in the explicitly non-satirical anti-war sub-genre. His novel was published less than a year before the Great Depression started, in Germany, which was quickly translated into English and became the highest selling novel of 1929 in the United States, ten years after that war had ended. Universal Studios bought the rights and immediately began production. Thomson approves of the improvements made since The Big Parade, which scrapped the romantic plot and led to the death of the protagonist in the end. (He also admires the poetic and ambivalent English title, but not before mistranslating the German title literally.) All Quiet made considerably less money at the box office than The Big Parade on a bigger budget, but that doesn’t matter, according to Thomson, because it’s remembered today in a more favorable (critical) light.
Here begins, nearly one-hundred pages into The Fatal Alliance, the problem of context—time and place and politics, oh my, in that, there isn’t much in this monograph. The ambition of a book on a century of war on film with less than four hundred pages of text came at the loss of a lot of background information. While this wouldn’t generally be a problem, Thomson, rather than offering an exhaustive analysis on the matter, criticizes some films for their narrow-minded point of view devoid of historical context. While I agree with this regarding the lazy war-films, the same way period-pieces in general should be critiqued, it would owe a great deal to the sub-genre—and reader—to know more about, perhaps, why black Americans haven’t been more present, or women, or other nationalities. Thomson focuses nearly all his attention on Anglo-American productions, much like his own split-Atlantic identity, as well as several hand-picked continental European examples. The exceptions to the rule include a large chapter simply called “Russia” as well as passing references to colonial peoples in Zulu (1964).
Global historical context is important. But reading this gives one the idea that Thomson’s traditional impressionistic staccato writing style fails to mention that, for instance, The Big Parade was made during a moviegoing highpoint while All Quiet was released half-a-year into the Great Depression. The Depression is referenced, but not explained, nor used conjunctively with “Great,” three times. “Interwar,” “inter-war,” and/or “inter war,” a vitally important era for the sub-genre, along with “modernity” and/or “modernism” are never mentioned. Thomson expects You to know that, which is why he uses that pesky second-person “you” and royal “we” to implicate you and/or me, the reader(s), in his own shorthand of history. Neither can one find much information on the British Empire, nor its hand-over to the Americans in the 20th century, an important event You should already understand, I guess. Instead, he prefers patronizing the reader for not knowing where Somalia is on a map or how many Russians died during WW2—as if he’s unlocking the historical archives for the first time, thus enlightening us. He’ll be shocked to find out how many Chinese people died via the occupation by the Japanese Empire.
Thomson too often relies on disputed facts and anachronisms in his disjointed impressions. For instance, he claims that WW1 “was the first war in which governments felt the need to justify the exercise of those who served.” Before 1914, did governments never propagandized war efforts to retain combat readiness? It wasn’t even the first war of the century to do this. Or that the machine gun, specifically the MG 08—which he uncomfortably fetishizes and tries to implicate us in that as well—though invented in 1890, “had very little testing in action.” Perhaps the Russo-Japanese War, taking place before Thomson’s starting point in 1914, wasn’t cinematic enough. But apparently WW1 was the annunciation of many other weapon technologies: machine guns as well as long-range artillery, submarines, airplanes. One shouldn’t bother looking into the Boer War, the American Civil War, or the Italo-Turkish War. And lastly, to make a counter-point about Russia, he writes that “battle has not been fought on US ground since 1865.” Does Pearl Harbor not count because it was mostly in the water/air—a game of semantics? But surely, he knows about the American Indian Wars, right? As disgusting as those were, they were fought on, and very much for, so-called “US ground.” Or what about that incursion by Pancho Villa into New Mexico in 1916 that Patton was sent to quell? Thomson mentions this incident no more than sixty pages prior but maybe forgot.
THE FILM industry of the nineteen-thirties hadn’t explored the war-film sub-genre as much as the gangster-film. The Big Parade (1925) by King Vidor walked so that All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) could win Outstanding Production (Best Picture) at the third Oscar Awards. The former received $20 million at the box office from a sub-$400 thousand budget, and, according to David Thomson in his new book, The Fatal Alliance: A Century of War on Film, “may be the most influential war movie ever made. Its mix of battle and romance (and box office) would be crucial. A genre was established.” More than that, it helped solidify MGM as a prominent studio and proved that war films could be massively profitable. But Thomson criticizes the naivety of Vidor and his use of unrealistic aesthetics for effect. Never mind that this was the first of its kind in an industry invented thirty years prior. He prefers Virginia Woolf’s influence of WW1 on the character of Septimus Warren Smith in Mrs. Dalloway, or Robert Graves’s memoir about being wounded on the Somme, as if literature (a medium he inherently privileges without qualifiers) provides an insight into explorations of interiority while cinema explores exteriority, a concept new for cinema (remember, thirty years old, versus literature, which is…much older).
Thomson then moves on to All Quiet. It was adapted from the novel by Erich Maria Remarque, a former Imperial German soldier who wanted to write an early entry in the explicitly non-satirical anti-war sub-genre. His novel was published less than a year before the Great Depression started, in Germany, which was quickly translated into English and became the highest selling novel of 1929 in the United States, ten years after that war had ended. Universal Studios bought the rights and immediately began production. Thomson approves of the improvements made since The Big Parade, which scrapped the romantic plot and led to the death of the protagonist in the end. (He also admires the poetic and ambivalent English title, but not before mistranslating the German title literally.) All Quiet made considerably less money at the box office than The Big Parade on a bigger budget, but that doesn’t matter, according to Thomson, because it’s remembered today in a more favorable (critical) light.
Here begins, nearly one-hundred pages into The Fatal Alliance, the problem of context—time and place and politics, oh my, in that, there isn’t much in this monograph. The ambition of a book on a century of war on film with less than four hundred pages of text came at the loss of a lot of background information. While this wouldn’t generally be a problem, Thomson, rather than offering an exhaustive analysis on the matter, criticizes some films for their narrow-minded point of view devoid of historical context. While I agree with this regarding the lazy war-films, the same way period-pieces in general should be critiqued, it would owe a great deal to the sub-genre—and reader—to know more about, perhaps, why black Americans haven’t been more present, or women, or other nationalities. Thomson focuses nearly all his attention on Anglo-American productions, much like his own split-Atlantic identity, as well as several hand-picked continental European examples. The exceptions to the rule include a large chapter simply called “Russia” as well as passing references to colonial peoples in Zulu (1964).
Global historical context is important. But reading this gives one the idea that Thomson’s traditional impressionistic staccato writing style fails to mention that, for instance, The Big Parade was made during a moviegoing highpoint while All Quiet was released half-a-year into the Great Depression. The Depression is referenced, but not explained, nor used conjunctively with “Great,” three times. “Interwar,” “inter-war,” and/or “inter war,” a vitally important era for the sub-genre, along with “modernity” and/or “modernism” are never mentioned. Thomson expects You to know that, which is why he uses that pesky second-person “you” and royal “we” to implicate you and/or me, the reader(s), in his own shorthand of history. Neither can one find much information on the British Empire, nor its hand-over to the Americans in the 20th century, an important event You should already understand, I guess. Instead, he prefers patronizing the reader for not knowing where Somalia is on a map or how many Russians died during WW2—as if he’s unlocking the historical archives for the first time, thus enlightening us. He’ll be shocked to find out how many Chinese people died via the occupation by the Japanese Empire.
Thomson too often relies on disputed facts and anachronisms in his disjointed impressions. For instance, he claims that WW1 “was the first war in which governments felt the need to justify the exercise of those who served.” Before 1914, did governments never propagandized war efforts to retain combat readiness? It wasn’t even the first war of the century to do this. Or that the machine gun, specifically the MG 08—which he uncomfortably fetishizes and tries to implicate us in that as well—though invented in 1890, “had very little testing in action.” Perhaps the Russo-Japanese War, taking place before Thomson’s starting point in 1914, wasn’t cinematic enough. But apparently WW1 was the annunciation of many other weapon technologies: machine guns as well as long-range artillery, submarines, airplanes. One shouldn’t bother looking into the Boer War, the American Civil War, or the Italo-Turkish War. And lastly, to make a counter-point about Russia, he writes that “battle has not been fought on US ground since 1865.” Does Pearl Harbor not count because it was mostly in the water/air—a game of semantics? But surely, he knows about the American Indian Wars, right? As disgusting as those were, they were fought on, and very much for, so-called “US ground.” Or what about that incursion by Pancho Villa into New Mexico in 1916 that Patton was sent to quell? Thomson mentions this incident no more than sixty pages prior but maybe forgot.