Right Person: Alright, listen up everyone! We're facing today's fierce enemy, the leftist!
(Meanwhile on the other side)
Left Person: Alright, listen up everyone! We're going up against the racist white right people today!
Right Person: In order to protect these people, from the crazy leftist…!
Left Person: We must first show them are racist and dangerous they are!
Right Person: And in order to fulfill that gold…!
Left Person: We must…!
Left and Right Person: Do some propaganda!
World War 1
Now for those that thought that sketch was silly, stupid and maybe offensive with the stereotype; well welcome to propaganda, or at least welcome to the mind set when it comes to propaganda. Now propaganda is a way for someone to capture an audience with their heart and emotions to make them support one group of people and make them, in turn, to see the other group as some sort of threat. Now propaganda isn't just use for wars, it can also be used for religious reasons, political or even as something as basic as for sports, but really when we think of propaganda most people associate with war and it's no wonder, I mean even before we all these technologies, newspapers, T.V, movies, most people back then if they wanted to get other people involved in a war they had to get to them with their own words coming out of their mouth while still propagating their agenda. Now we have all these media programs and we have the internet in our own hands that you can make your own propaganda.
Anyway, back to the topic, today's propaganda we're going to be looking at, is propaganda for World War 1, specifically film propaganda and there's two reasons why this type of propaganda is important in terms of for the film industry.
One, this is the first time movies played a part in the propaganda game during an actual war that was going on at the time. Yes films were there during the 1890s and 1900s when other wars were happening around the world, but the movies were still very much at their early stages and there was little to no film propaganda at the time that a war was going on, or if there was not many people saw it at the time, and there were other forms of war propaganda like the Romanian-Russo-Turkish made by Romania, but it was more or less like a documentary on how Romania got their independence. So this was the war that films played part in, in terms of propaganda the most.
Two, this was the true moment where people started to understand that a film can leave just as much of an emotion and impact from an audience as any other from of art, and even the government of these countries took notice of this. If they can somehow inform their people the way they want them to be informed about the war, then not only can they get some of these people to support the war, but to also join the war.
It's important to know that this war would also be the first time in film history where actors, actresses and even directors would leave just as much an impact on people and they would be treated as if they were just as important as a President or a politician. They would show up in public places or host live events and they would try to get their fans to support the war and their military and buy war bonds to help raise money for the military. Studios from around the world eventually caught on about using the films and their most popular stars as a way to get people involved in the war one way or another. So some government funded companies, like Committee of Public Information, Department of Information, and Universum Film Aktiengesellschaft were made to make newsreels and propaganda films, they had to get some footage from the war by either going to an actual trench fill war or from staging a trench fill and they basically pick and choose on what to keep and what to cut out of the reel.
People really wanted to know wanted to know how were things going on the front line and if any of their friends or love ones are doing great out there and film again was one of the best sort of media to get your information, because unlike newspapers that had only pictures and words, a film has moving picture and while some cameras were still a bit heavy to move, you could still bring your camera with you to the front line and capture any battle combat going on with your camera and actually show your audiences what is going in the war right now, but at a certain cost.
Like I said, while there were film propaganda on wars back than, most of them were either unknown or just a stage version, there weren't that many actual footage's on the actual wars that were going on at the time, so by the time World War 1 broke out, it became a little more easier to get actual war footage in real life, but you had to expect at least three things when capturing some war footage.
One, you had to get the OK from the government or the leader of the country if you wanted to go to an actual trench warfare and capture of actual war footage, even private companies had to be careful on how to show their footage with the audience so they don't cause a disruption or an outcry.
Two, and this one is obvious, but even if you had the okay with the government, be prepared to get hurt or at least be aware that you're putting your life on the line when getting some war footage. This is an actual real life war, these are not actors or this is not staged or anything and you can literally get yourself killed by doing this, and no one is going to think twice, so you had to be super extreme cautions when going out into the battlefield.
Three, even once you make it to the battlefield, get ready to be a little disappointed. Now at this point wars were often thought of as people just running head first into groups, and guns and cannons would go off, swords were being drawn and used, but that was far from the actual reality from the what was actually going on. There was little to almost no actual war combat what was happening. Most of the fighting took place in the trenches which started in late 1914, so most of the combat would take place underground with both sides hiding in the trenches while fighting the enemy and the directors and actors and even the government thought that it was boring and it would drive people away from the war if they knew the actual truth, so they had to play up the war a little bit more and make up some stuff to get more people into the war as soldiers or helpers. So what directors would do is that they would stage of fake war combat at a sensible and safe place and much like anything else in a movie, the actors would act up the war combat that people really wanted to see. Sometimes they would actually get actual soldiers and actual war scenes from the real places where the war was happening. For example in the British propaganda, The Battle of the Somme, the first two reels of the film were scenes of actual and real war soldiers preparing themselves for war as they get their helmets on and they march proudly to fight the enemy. While the majority of the film after that was staged. Originally this feature film was actually supposed to be a couple of short films used for the British newsreels, but a person in the editing team, Charles Urban, suggested that the reels be turned into a feature film instead, and the British Topical Committee for War Films agreed to the change and it was met with a full house on it's premier in Britain so much that the even attracted middle class audiences and it box office hit.
Of course there were other propaganda films during World War 1. Some films would take place during the actual war itself, like D.W. Griffith's Hearts of the World (1918), or Charlie Chaplin's Shoulder Arms (1918). There are other propaganda films that would be more about the government and to get people to support the military and buy war bonds like Mary Pickford's One Hundred Percent American (1918), and of course like any topics out there, you're going to have some opposing sides as well so there were some anti war films as well like Civilization in which Jesus comes in and shows a king how war is bad. Yeah it's one of those types of movies.
Well regardless, even after the war was over, much the civil war or any films that dealt with previous wars, there were still many films about World War One after the war, again wither the war was the main part of the story or a side thing or it was pro war or anti war film, there were still plenty of World War one films and some of them we will actually get to talk about in the next decade, but it is important to know that this war was important for the movie and film industries as now people realized that you can use a film to capture the emotions and minds of an audience and that movies are not just mindless entertainment as some people thought they were. They can be use for something serious and make people think, something like books or songs where you can make and take them seriously, it just depends on the director and the movie itself, and this war would really make Hollywood one of the biggest movie industry of all time as we'll see in how film and movies would shape in other countries after the war was over, so we do have the Great War to thank for in some way.