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178-577: In Which We Serve is a 1942 British patriotic war film directed by Noël Coward and David Lean , who made his debut as a director. It was made during the Second World War with the assistance of the Ministry of Information . The screenplay by Coward was inspired by the exploits of Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten , who was in command of the destroyer HMS  Kelly when it was sunk during

356-487: A military objective of some sort. They take place in the actual combat zones of World War II, against the established enemies, on the ground, the sea, or in the air. They contain many repeated events, such as mail call, all presented visually with appropriate uniforms , equipment, and iconography of battle. Further, Basinger considers Bataan to provide a definition-by-example of "the World War II combat film", in which

534-492: A "war propaganda film ". A 1978 Mondadori poll placed Alexander Nevsky among the world's 100 best motion pictures. Battleship A battleship is a large, heavily armored warship with a main battery consisting of large- caliber guns , designed to serve as capital ships with the most intense firepower . Before the rise of supercarriers , battleships were among the largest and most formidable weapon systems ever built. The term battleship came into use in

712-525: A British family on the home front; Edge of Darkness (1943) showed Norwegian resistance fighters, and The North Star (1943) showed the Soviet Union and its Communist Party . Towards the end of the war popular books provided higher quality and more serious stories for films such as Guadalcanal Diary (1943), Mervyn LeRoy 's Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), and John Ford 's They Were Expendable (1945). The Soviet Union, too, appreciated

890-503: A British victory. The German strategy was therefore to try to provoke an engagement on their terms: either to induce a part of the Grand Fleet to enter battle alone, or to fight a pitched battle near the German coastline, where friendly minefields, torpedo-boats and submarines could be used to even the odds. This did not happen, however, due in large part to the necessity to keep submarines for

1068-632: A Japanese perspective. These "generally fail to explain the cause of the war". In the decades immediately after the Second World War, Japanese films often focused on human tragedy rather than combat, such as The Burmese Harp (1956) and Fires on the Plain (1959). From the late 1990s, films started to take a positive view of the war and of Japanese actions. These nationalistic films, including Pride (1998), Merdeka 17805 (2001), and The Truth about Nanjing (2007), have emphasized positive traits of

1246-424: A Japanese soldier beheads an American: the victim shows pain and his lips freeze in a scream, yet no blood spurts and his head does not fall off. Basinger points out that while this is physically unrealistic, psychologically it may not have been. The wartime audience was, she points out, well aware of friends and relatives who had been killed or who had come home wounded. The Axis powers similarly made films during

1424-423: A Western like Sam Peckinpah 's The Wild Bunch and "war-movie escapades" like The Dirty Dozen . The film historian Jeanine Basinger states that she began with a preconception of what the war film genre would be, namely that: What I knew in advance was what presumably every member of our culture would know about World War II combat films—that they contained a hero , a group of mixed types [of people], and

1602-477: A close second. The costliest war in U.S. history in terms of American life, this war has been the subject of, or the backdrop to, numerous films, documentaries and mini-series. One of the earliest films using the Civil War as its subject was D.W. Griffith 's 1910 silent picture, The Fugitive . Films that have the war as its main subject, or about a certain aspect of the war, include the 1989 film Glory , about

1780-414: A diverse and apparently unsuited group of "hastily assembled volunteers" hold off a much larger group of the enemy through their "bravery and tenacity". She argues that the combat film is not a subgenre but the only genuine kind of war film. Since she notes that there were in fact only five true combat films made during the Second World War, in her view these few films, central to the genre, are outweighed by

1958-629: A large armored warship of 17,000 tons, armed solely with a single calibre main battery (twelve 12-inch [305 mm] guns), carrying 300-millimetre (12 in) belt armor , and capable of 24 knots (44 km/h). The Russo-Japanese War provided operational experience to validate the "all-big-gun" concept. During the Battle of the Yellow Sea on August 10, 1904, Admiral Togo of the Imperial Japanese Navy commenced deliberate 12-inch gun fire at

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2136-585: A large block superstructure nicknamed the "Queen Anne's castle", such as in Queen Elizabeth and Warspite , which would be used in the new conning towers of the King George V -class fast battleships . External bulges were added to improve both buoyancy to counteract weight increase and provide underwater protection against mines and torpedoes. The Japanese rebuilt all of their battleships, plus their battlecruisers, with distinctive " pagoda " structures, though

2314-477: A large presence of military personnel. Richard Attenborough appeared as a sailor deserting his post under fire. His name and character were omitted from the original release-print credits but were subsequently added. Interiors were filmed at Denham Studios , in Denham , Buckinghamshire . The destroyer HMAS  Nepal played HMS Torrin . The Kinross family picnic scene, set during the Battle of Britain in 1940,

2492-541: A major threat to wooden ships, and these weapons quickly became widespread after the introduction of 8-inch shell guns as part of the standard armament of French and American line-of-battle ships in 1841. In the Crimean War , six line-of-battle ships and two frigates of the Russian Black Sea Fleet destroyed seven Turkish frigates and three corvettes with explosive shells at the Battle of Sinop in 1853. Later in

2670-575: A mine laid by a German U-boat in October 1914 and sank. The threat that German U-boats posed to British dreadnoughts was enough to cause the Royal Navy to change their strategy and tactics in the North Sea to reduce the risk of U-boat attack. Further near-misses from submarine attacks on battleships and casualties amongst cruisers led to growing concern in the Royal Navy about the vulnerability of battleships. As

2848-483: A mine laid by friendly forces, and sank with little loss of life. In May 1937, Jaime I was damaged by Nationalist air attacks and a grounding incident. The ship was forced to go back to port to be repaired. There she was again hit by several aerial bombs. It was then decided to tow the battleship to a more secure port, but during the transport she suffered an internal explosion that caused 300 deaths and her total loss. Several Italian and German capital ships participated in

3026-562: A mixed-caliber secondary battery amidships around the superstructure. An early design with superficial similarity to the pre-dreadnought is the British Devastation class of 1871. The slow-firing 12-inch (305 mm) main guns were the principal weapons for battleship-to-battleship combat. The intermediate and secondary batteries had two roles. Against major ships, it was thought a 'hail of fire' from quick-firing secondary weapons could distract enemy gun crews by inflicting damage to

3204-513: A near certainty. The Torrin spends a quiet Christmas in the north of Scotland during the Phoney War , but in 1940 it fights its first engagement during the Battle of Narvik . During that action, the ship is struck by a torpedo . The damaged Torrin is towed back to port, all the time being harried by dive bombers. Safely back in harbour, Captain Kinross tells the assembled ship's company that during

3382-450: A number of 12-pound (3-inch, 76 mm) quick-firing guns for use against destroyers and torpedo-boats. Her armor was heavy enough for her to go head-to-head with any other ship in a gun battle, and conceivably win. Dreadnought was to have been followed by three Invincible -class battlecruisers, their construction delayed to allow lessons from Dreadnought to be used in their design. While Fisher may have intended Dreadnought to be

3560-472: A powerful emotional impact. It was watched by some 20 million people in Britain in its six weeks of exhibition, making it what the critic Francine Stock called "one of the most successful films of all time". The 1925 American film The Big Parade depicted unglamorous elements of war: the protagonist loses his leg, and his friends are killed. William A. Wellman 's Wings (1927) showed aerial combat during

3738-563: A propeller, and her wooden hull was protected by a layer of thick iron armor. Gloire prompted further innovation from the Royal Navy , anxious to prevent France from gaining a technological lead. The superior armored frigate Warrior followed Gloire by only 14 months, and both nations embarked on a program of building new ironclads and converting existing screw ships of the line to armored frigates. Within two years, Italy, Austria, Spain and Russia had all ordered ironclad warships, and by

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3916-528: A quiet Russian and an extrovert southerner from Odessa, singing in his dugout. The many Soviet films about the Second World War include both large-scale epics such as Yury Ozerov 's Battle of Moscow (1985) and Mikhail Kalatozov 's more psychological The Cranes are Flying (1957) on the cruel effects of war; it won the 1958 Palme d'Or at Cannes. Japanese directors have made popular films such as Submarine I-57 Will Not Surrender (1959), Battle of Okinawa (1971) and Japan's Longest Day (1967) from

4094-479: A result of pressure from Admiral Sir John ("Jackie") Fisher , HMS Dreadnought rendered existing battleships obsolete. Combining an "all-big-gun" armament of ten 12-inch (305 mm) guns with unprecedented speed (from steam turbine engines) and protection, she prompted navies worldwide to re-evaluate their battleship building programs. While the Japanese had laid down an all-big-gun battleship, Satsuma , in 1904 and

4272-601: A running time of 96 minutes was released by Carlton on 11 October 1999. A Region 1 DVD was released as part of the David Lean Collection by MGM on 7 September 2004. It features subtitles in English, Spanish, and French and an English audio track in Dolby Digital 1.0. In March 2012 The Criterion Collection released In Which We Serve on Blu-ray and DVD as part of the 'David Lean Directs Noël Coward' box set, which includes

4450-427: A ship of the line could wreck any wooden enemy, holing her hull , knocking down masts , wrecking her rigging , and killing her crew. However, the effective range of the guns was as little as a few hundred yards, so the battle tactics of sailing ships depended in part on the wind. Over time, ships of the line gradually became larger and carried more guns, but otherwise remained quite similar. The first major change to

4628-458: A short documentary on the making of In Which We Serve . War film War film is a film genre concerned with warfare , typically about naval , air , or land battles, with combat scenes central to the drama. It has been strongly associated with the 20th century. The fateful nature of battle scenes means that war films often end with them. Themes explored include combat , survival and escape, camaraderie between soldiers , sacrifice,

4806-525: A similar design in the Bellerophon and St. Vincent classes . An American design, South Carolina , authorized in 1905 and laid down in December 1906, was another of the first dreadnoughts, but she and her sister, Michigan , were not launched until 1908. Both used triple-expansion engines and had a superior layout of the main battery, dispensing with Dreadnought ' s wing turrets. They thus retained

4984-462: A speed of 12 knots (22 km/h), regardless of the wind. This was a potentially decisive advantage in a naval engagement. The introduction of steam accelerated the growth in size of battleships. France and the United Kingdom were the only countries to develop fleets of wooden steam screw battleships although several other navies operated small numbers of screw battleships, including Russia (9),

5162-502: A traditional war film should have a hero, a group, and an objective, and that the group should contain "an Italian, a Jew, a cynical complainer from Brooklyn, a sharpshooter from the mountains, a midwesterner (nicknamed by his state, 'Iowa' or 'Dakota'), and a character who must be initiated in some way". Films based on real commando missions, like The Gift Horse (1952) based on the St. Nazaire Raid , and Ill Met by Moonlight (1956) based on

5340-641: A train while on leave. She is related to the Torrin ' s affable Chief Petty Officer Hardy. When both men return to sea, Freda moves in with Hardy's wife and mother-in-law. The Torrin participates in the Dunkirk evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (portrayed in the film by the 5th Battalion of the Coldstream Guards ). Blake gets a letter to say that Freda has given birth to his son during

5518-617: A war scare with France and the build-up of the Russian navy gave added impetus to naval construction, and the British Naval Defence Act of 1889 laid down a new fleet including eight new battleships. The principle that Britain's navy should be more powerful than the two next most powerful fleets combined was established. This policy was designed to deter France and Russia from building more battleships, but both nations nevertheless expanded their fleets with more and better pre-dreadnoughts in

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5696-402: Is a classic example of wartime British cinema through its patriotic imagery of national unity and social cohesion within the context of the war. The film opens with the narration: "This is the story of a ship". In 1941 HMS Torrin engages German transports in a night-time action during the Battle of Crete , but at dawn, the destroyer comes under attack from German bombers. A critical hit forces

5874-574: The Hiei received a more modern bridge tower that would influence the new Yamato class . Bulges were fitted, including steel tube arrays to improve both underwater and vertical protection along the waterline. The U.S. experimented with cage masts and later tripod masts , though after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor some of the most severely damaged ships (such as West Virginia and California ) were rebuilt with tower masts, for an appearance similar to their Iowa -class contemporaries. Radar, which

6052-714: The King George V class . It was in the Mediterranean that navies remained most committed to battleship warfare. France intended to build six battleships of the Dunkerque and Richelieu classes , and the Italians four Littorio -class ships. Neither navy built significant aircraft carriers. The U.S. preferred to spend limited funds on aircraft carriers until the South Dakota class . Japan, also prioritising aircraft carriers, nevertheless began work on three mammoth Yamato s (although

6230-640: The Algerian War (1954–1956). It was shot on location as an Italo-Algerian co-production. It had the black and white newsreel style of Italian neorealism , and even-handedly depicts violence on both sides. It won various awards including Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival . It was attacked by French critics and was for five years banned in France as well as Jamila, the Algerian (1958). Few films before

6408-451: The Allied and Axis powers built battleships during World War II, though the increasing importance of the aircraft carrier meant that the battleship played a less important role than had been expected in that conflict. The value of the battleship has been questioned, even during their heyday. There were few of the decisive fleet battles that battleship proponents expected and used to justify

6586-474: The Battle of Crete . Coward composed the music as well as starring in the film as the ship's captain. The film also starred John Mills , Bernard Miles , Celia Johnson and Richard Attenborough in his first screen role. In Which We Serve received the full backing of the Ministry of Information, which offered advice on what would make good propaganda and facilitated the release of military personnel. The film

6764-411: The Battle of Stalingrad . Feature films made in the west during the war were subject to censorship and were not always realistic in nature. One of the first to attempt to represent violence, and which was praised at the time for "gritty realism", was Tay Garnett 's Bataan (1943). The depiction actually remained stylised. Jeanine Basinger gives as an example the "worst image for stark violence" when

6942-839: The First Geneva Naval Conference (1927), the First London Naval Treaty (1930), the Second Geneva Naval Conference (1932), and finally the Second London Naval Treaty (1936), which all set limits on major warships. These treaties became effectively obsolete on September 1, 1939, at the beginning of World War II , but the ship classifications that had been agreed upon still apply. The treaty limitations meant that fewer new battleships were launched in 1919–1939 than in 1905–1914. The treaties also inhibited development by imposing upper limits on

7120-638: The Indonesian war of independence (1945–1949). Two other films about the same period portray the Indonesian equivalent of the Chinese Long March : Usmar Ismail 's Darah dan Doa ( The Long March , literally "Blood and Prayer", 1950) and Mereka Kembali ( They Return , 1975). Each of these films interprets the past from the perspective of its own time. The more recent Merdeka (Freedom) trilogy (2009–2011), starting with Merah Putih ("Red and White",

7298-678: The Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War. The film cuts to an (American) "helicopter-eye view", contrasting painfully with the human tenderness seen earlier. Dino Mustafić's Remake (2003), written by Zlatko Topčić , tells the parallel coming-of-age stories of a father living in Sarajevo during World War II and his son living through the Siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War . According to Topčić,

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7476-492: The Ottoman Empire (3), Sweden (2), Naples (1), Denmark (1) and Austria (1). The adoption of steam power was only one of a number of technological advances which revolutionized warship design in the 19th century. The ship of the line was overtaken by the ironclad : powered by steam, protected by metal armor, and armed with guns firing high-explosive shells . Guns that fired explosive or incendiary shells were

7654-480: The Plymouth Blitz , but that Hardy's wife and mother-in-law were killed. He has to tell Hardy, who is writing a letter home, the bitter news. The survivors on the life raft watch the Torrin finally sink. Captain Kinross leads a final "three cheers" for the Torrin . A British destroyer soon begins rescuing the men. Captain Kinross talks to the survivors and collects addresses from the dying. Telegrams are sent to

7832-551: The Royal Navy was able to use her imposing battleship and battlecruiser fleet to impose a strict and successful naval blockade of Germany and kept Germany's smaller battleship fleet bottled up in the North Sea : only narrow channels led to the Atlantic Ocean and these were guarded by British forces. Both sides were aware that, because of the greater number of British dreadnoughts, a full fleet engagement would be likely to result in

8010-509: The Second World War came from Britain and combined the functions of documentary and propaganda. Films such as The Lion Has Wings and Target for Tonight were made under the control of the Films Division of the Ministry of Information. The British film industry began to combine documentary techniques with fictional stories in films like Noël Coward and David Lean 's In Which We Serve (1942)—"the most successful British film of

8188-598: The Torrin in Alexandria, Coward used the real speech that Mountbatten gave to the surviving crew of HMS Kelly after they were rescued and taken to Egypt. Coward was determined to portray Captain Kinross in the film despite the studio's concern that his public "dressing gown and cigarette-holder" persona might make it difficult for audiences to accept him in the role of a tough navy man. Havelock-Allan supported him, although he later called his performance "always interesting, if not quite convincing." Coward also needed to convince

8366-455: The West Indies . Havelock-Allan told Coward he needed to trim the plot down to the basics by eliminating everything that was not related to the Torrin or its crew. Heeding the advice, Coward started his story with the laying of the ship's keel in 1939 and concluded it soon after it sank off the coast of Crete. For the speech at the end of the film, when Capt. Kinross addresses the survivors from

8544-830: The Western Desert of North Africa and the Pacific in the Second World War, Vietnam , or the Soviet–Afghan War ; and films set in specific domains of war, such as the infantry, the air, at sea, in submarines or at prisoner of war camps. The war film genre is not necessarily tightly defined: the American Film Institute , for example, speaks of "films to grapple with the Great War" without attempting to classify these. However, some directors and critics have offered at least tentative definitions. The director Sam Fuller defined

8722-492: The battle of the Atlantic . Others, like The Dam Busters (1954), with its exciting tale of the inventor Barnes Wallis 's unorthodox bouncing bomb and its distinctive theme music , were true stories. The Dam Busters became the most popular film in Britain in 1955, and remained a favourite as of 2015 with a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes , though, partly because it celebrated an "exclusively British [victory]", it failed in

8900-480: The genre by saying that "a war film's objective, no matter how personal or emotional, is to make a viewer feel war." John Belton identified four narrative elements of the war film within the context of Hollywood production: a) the suspension of civilian morality during times of war, b) primacy of collective goals over individual motivations, c) rivalry between men in predominantly male groups as well as marginalization and objectification of women, and d) depiction of

9078-494: The "unsinkable" German World War I battleship SMS  Ostfriesland and the American pre-dreadnought Alabama . Although Mitchell had required "war-time conditions", the ships sunk were obsolete, stationary, defenseless and had no damage control. The sinking of Ostfriesland was accomplished by violating an agreement that would have allowed Navy engineers to examine the effects of various munitions: Mitchell's airmen disregarded

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9256-451: The 1890s. In the last years of the 19th century and the first years of the 20th, the escalation in the building of battleships became an arms race between Britain and Germany . The German naval laws of 1890 and 1898 authorized a fleet of 38 battleships, a vital threat to the balance of naval power. Britain answered with further shipbuilding, but by the end of the pre-dreadnought era, British supremacy at sea had markedly weakened. In 1883,

9434-466: The 1950s and 1960s. War film production in the United Kingdom and United States reached its zenith in the mid-1950s. Its popularity in the United Kingdom was brought on by the critical and commercial success of Charles Frend 's The Cruel Sea (1953). Like others of the period, The Cruel Sea was based on a bestselling novel, in this case the former naval commander Nicholas Monsarrat 's story of

9612-460: The 8-inch battery being completely unusable, and the inability to train the primary and intermediate armaments on different targets led to significant tactical limitations. Even though such innovative designs saved weight (a key reason for their inception), they proved too cumbersome in practice. In 1906, the British Royal Navy launched the revolutionary HMS  Dreadnought . Created as

9790-642: The American Indian Wars of the 19th century were called war films in the time before the First World War. The critic Julian Smith argues, on the contrary, that the war film lacks the formal boundaries of a genre like the Western , but that in practice, "successful and influential" war films are about modern wars, in particular World War II, with the combination of mobile forces and mass killing. The film scholar Kathryn Kane points out some similarities between

9968-661: The American market. A large number of war films were made in the 1955–1958 period in particular. In 1957 alone, Bitter Victory , Count Five and Die , The Enemy Below , Ill Met by Moonlight , Men in War , The One That Got Away , and Seven Thunders , and the highly successful, critically acclaimed pictures The Bridge on the River Kwai (which won the Academy Award for Best Picture that year ) and Paths of Glory were released. Some, such as Bitter Victory , focused more on

10146-735: The Americans. Similarly, the country's films about the Korean War show victory without help from the Chinese. The film scholar Johannes Schönherr concludes that the purpose of these films is "to portray North Korea as a country under siege", and that since the U.S. and its "puppet" South Korea invaded the North once, they would do so again. Gillo Pontecorvo 's dramatic The Battle of Algiers (( Italian : La battaglia di Algeri ; Arabic : معركة الجزائر ; French : La Bataille d'Alger ), 1966) portrayed events in

10324-545: The Atlantic campaign. Submarines were the only vessels in the Imperial German Navy able to break out and raid British commerce in force, but even though they sank many merchant ships, they could not successfully counter-blockade the United Kingdom; the Royal Navy successfully adopted convoy tactics to combat Germany's submarine counter-blockade and eventually defeated it. This was in stark contrast to Britain's successful blockade of Germany. The first two years of war saw

10502-597: The British and French blockade. And in the Mediterranean , the most important use of battleships was in support of the amphibious assault on Gallipoli . In September 1914, the threat posed to surface ships by German U-boats was confirmed by successful attacks on British cruisers, including the sinking of three British armored cruisers by the German submarine SM  U-9 in less than an hour. The British Super-dreadnought HMS  Audacious soon followed suit as she struck

10680-570: The British fleet. Less than two months later, the Germans once again attempted to draw portions of the Grand Fleet into battle. The resulting Action of 19 August 1916 proved inconclusive. This reinforced German determination not to engage in a fleet to fleet battle. In the other naval theatres there were no decisive pitched battles. In the Black Sea , engagement between Russian and Ottoman battleships

10858-858: The Central Powers and the Allies produced war documentaries. The films were also used as propaganda in neutral countries like the United States. Among these was a film shot on the Eastern Front by official war photographer to the Central Powers, Albert K. Dawson : The Battle and Fall of Przemysl (1915), depicting the Siege of Przemyśl , disastrous for the Austrians, with incidents reenacted using soldiers as extras. The 1915 Australian film Within Our Gates (also known as Deeds that Won Gallipoli ) by Frank Harvey

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11036-445: The Dardanelles Campaign and the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian dreadnought SMS  Szent István by Italian motor torpedo boats in June 1918. In large fleet actions, however, destroyers and torpedo boats were usually unable to get close enough to the battleships to damage them. The only battleship sunk in a fleet action by either torpedo boats or destroyers was the obsolescent German pre-dreadnought SMS  Pommern . She

11214-400: The German Navy, and prevented Germany from building or possessing any capital ships . The inter-war period saw the battleship subjected to strict international limitations to prevent a costly arms race breaking out. While the victors were not limited by the Treaty of Versailles, many of the major naval powers were crippled after the war. Faced with the prospect of a naval arms race against

11392-487: The Golden Mulberry at the Udine Far East Film Festival, but was criticised for its nationalistic sympathy with kamikaze pilots. The wartime authorities in both Britain and America produced a wide variety of documentary films. Their purposes included military training, advice to civilians, and encouragement to maintain security. Since these films often carried messages, they grade into propaganda. Similarly, commercially produced films often combined information, support for

11570-415: The High Seas Fleet be disarmed and interned in a neutral port; largely because no neutral port could be found, the ships remained in British custody in Scapa Flow , Scotland. The Treaty of Versailles specified that the ships should be handed over to the British. Instead, most of them were scuttled by their German crews on June 21, 1919, just before the signature of the peace treaty. The treaty also limited

11748-407: The Japanese military and contended that the Japanese were victims of post-war vindictiveness and viciousness. Such films have, however, been subject to protest for revisionism . The Eternal Zero (2013) narrates the tale of a Zero fighter pilot who is considered a coward by his comrades, as he returns alive from his missions. It broke the record takings for a Japanese live action film, and won

11926-431: The Japanese state as one great family and the Japanese people as an "innocent, suffering, self-sacrificing people". Dower comments that the perversity of this image "is obvious: it is devoid of any recognition that, at every level, the Japanese also victimized others." According to Andrew Pulver of The Guardian , the public fascination with war films became an "obsession", with over 200 war films produced in each decade of

12104-422: The Maine Victims , Blanket-Tossing of a New Recruit , and Soldiers Washing Dishes . These non-combat films were accompanied by "reenactments" of fighting, such as of Theodore Roosevelt 's "Rough Riders" in action against the Spanish, staged in the United States. During the First World War, many films were made about life in the war. Topics included prisoners of war, covert operations, and military training. Both

12282-473: The Moray Firth. Whilst the escape of the German fleet from the superior British firepower at Jutland was effected by the German cruisers and destroyers successfully turning away the British battleships, the German attempt to rely on U-boat attacks on the British fleet failed. Torpedo boats did have some successes against battleships in World War I, as demonstrated by the sinking of the British pre-dreadnought HMS  Goliath by Muâvenet-i Millîye during

12460-468: The North Sea were battles including the Heligoland Bight and Dogger Bank and German raids on the English coast, all of which were attempts by the Germans to lure out portions of the Grand Fleet in an attempt to defeat the Royal Navy in detail. On May 31, 1916, a further attempt to draw British ships into battle on German terms resulted in a clash of the battlefleets in the Battle of Jutland . The German fleet withdrew to port after two short encounters with

12638-429: The Republic, killed their officers, who apparently supported Franco's attempted coup, and joined the Republican Navy. Thus each side had one battleship; however, the Republican Navy generally lacked experienced officers. The Spanish battleships mainly restricted themselves to mutual blockades, convoy escort duties, and shore bombardment, rarely in direct fighting against other surface units. In April 1937, España ran into

12816-496: The Royal Navy's battleships and battlecruisers regularly "sweep" the North Sea making sure that no German ships could get in or out. Only a few German surface ships that were already at sea, such as the famous light cruiser SMS  Emden , were able to raid commerce. Even some of those that did manage to get out were hunted down by battlecruisers, as in the Battle of the Falklands , December 7, 1914. The results of sweeping actions in

12994-502: The Russian flagship Tzesarevich at 14,200 yards (13,000 meters). At the Battle of Tsushima on May 27, 1905, Russian Admiral Rozhestvensky's flagship fired the first 12-inch guns at the Japanese flagship Mikasa at 7,000 meters. It is often held that these engagements demonstrated the importance of the 12-inch (305 mm) gun over its smaller counterparts, though some historians take the view that secondary batteries were just as important as

13172-546: The Russian people to battle, actual fighting, Germans surrendering and dead, and atrocities including murdered children and hanged civilians. It won an Academy Award in 1943 for best documentary. Newsreel cameras were similarly rushed to Stalingrad early in 1943 to record "the spectacle which greeted the Russian soldiers"—the starvation of Russian prisoners of war in the Voropovono camp by the German Sixth Army , defeated in

13350-625: The Second Sino–Japanese War from 1937 onwards did war film become a serious genre in China, with nationalistic films such as Shi Dongshan 's Protect Our Land (1938). The Chinese Civil War, too, attracted films such as Cheng Yin 's From Victory to Victory (1952). A more humanistic film set in the same period is Xie Jin 's The Cradle (1979), while more recent large-scale commercial films include Lu Chuan 's City of Life and Death (2009). Chinese directors have repeatedly attempted to cover

13528-454: The Second World War, for propaganda and other purposes. In Germany, the army high command brought out Sieg im Westen ("Victory in the West", 1941). Other Nazi propaganda films had varied subjects, as with Kolberg (1945), which depicts stubborn Prussian resistance in the Siege of Kolberg (1807) to the invading French troops under Napoleon . The propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels chose

13706-496: The U.S. Navy's nascent aircraft carrier program. The Royal Navy , United States Navy , and Imperial Japanese Navy extensively upgraded and modernized their World War I–era battleships during the 1930s. Among the new features were an increased tower height and stability for the optical rangefinder equipment (for gunnery control), more armor (especially around turrets) to protect against plunging fire and aerial bombing, and additional anti-aircraft weapons. Some British ships received

13884-506: The United Kingdom and Japan, which would in turn have led to a possible Pacific war , the United States was keen to conclude the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. This treaty limited the number and size of battleships that each major nation could possess, and required Britain to accept parity with the U.S. and to abandon the British alliance with Japan. The Washington treaty was followed by a series of other naval treaties, including

14062-683: The United Kingdom had 38 battleships, twice as many as France and almost as many as the rest of the world put together. In 1897, Britain's lead was far smaller due to competition from France, Germany, and Russia, as well as the development of pre-dreadnought fleets in Italy, the United States and Japan . The Ottoman Empire, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Norway , the Netherlands , Chile and Brazil all had second-rate fleets led by armored cruisers , coastal defence ships or monitors . Pre-dreadnoughts continued

14240-502: The West End in July 1941, Noël Coward was approached by Anthony Havelock-Allan , who was working with the production company Two Cities Films . Its founder, Filippo Del Giudice , was interested in making a propaganda film and wanted someone well-known to write the screenplay. Coward agreed to work on the project as long as the subject was the Royal Navy , and he was given complete control. As

14418-519: The atrocities committed by the Japanese during the Nanjing Massacre (1937–1938), with films such as the political melodrama Massacre in Nanjing , Mou Tun Fei 's docudrama Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre , and the "contrived Sino–Japanese romance" Don't Cry, Nanking . Zhang Yimou 's epic Chinese film Flowers of War (2011), based on Geling Yan 's novel, portrays the violent events through

14596-643: The attempted invasion of the Russian city of Novgorod by the Teutonic Knights . By April 1939 the film had been seen by 23,000,000 people. In 1941 the director and three others were awarded the Stalin Prize for their contributions. The film features a musical score by the classical composer Sergei Prokofiev , considered by artists such as the composer André Previn the best ever written for cinema. Russell Merritt, writing in Film Quarterly , describes it as

14774-488: The battle nearly all the crew performed as he would expect, but one man did not. However, he surprises everyone when he says that he let him off with caution as he feels that, as captain, he failed to make him understand his duty. Returning to the present, the float survivors watch the capsized Torrin take on water and slowly sink. The raft is again strafed by German planes and some men are killed or wounded. Shorty Blake recalls in flashback how he met his wife-to-be, Freda, on

14952-491: The best of popular Indonesian cinema". It was the first Indonesian film to become well known internationally. War has been the Soviet Union's cinema's major genre, becoming known indeed as the "cinema front", and its war films ranged from grim portrayals of atrocities to sentimental and even quietly subversive accounts. Leonid Lukov 's popular and "beautiful" Two Warriors (1943) depicted two stereotypical Soviet soldiers,

15130-466: The capture of the German commander of Crete, inspired fictional adventure films such as The Guns of Navarone (1961), The Train (1964), and Where Eagles Dare (1968). These used the war as a backdrop for spectacular action. Darryl F. Zanuck produced the 178 minute documentary drama The Longest Day (1962), based on the first day of the D-Day landings , achieving commercial success and Oscars. It

15308-461: The censors that the sinking of the ship was a crucial scene and not the threat to public morale they perceived it to be. Coward had experience directing plays, but he was a novice when it came to films, and he knew he needed to surround himself with professionals if the project was to succeed. He had seen and admired Ronald Neame 's work and he hired him as cinematographer and chief lighting technician . The Italian film director Filippo Del Giudice

15486-554: The colours of the flag of the new Indonesia), revisits the campaign for independence through the lives of a diverse group of cadets who become guerillas. Karya's November 1828 (1979) looks at Indonesia's struggle for independence through historical drama about the Java or Diponegoro War (1825–1830), though the colonial enemy was the same, the Dutch . Deanne Schultz considered it "a valuable interpretation" of Indonesian history that "embodies

15664-494: The comment that "for all its epic pretensions (as if epic were a matter of running time, tumescent music and earnest voice-over pronouncements), the movie works best as a bang-and-boom action picture". Steven Spielberg 's Saving Private Ryan (1998) uses hand-held camera, sound design, staging, and increased audio-visual detail to defamiliarise viewers accustomed to conventional combat films, so as to create what film historian Stuart Bender calls "reported realism", whether or not

15842-798: The common Japanese soldier as an individual and as a family man, and even enemy Chinese soldiers are presented as individuals, sometimes fighting bravely. Once war with the United States was declared, the Japanese conflict became known as the Pacific War . Japanese film critics worried that even with Western film techniques, their film output failed to represent native Japanese values. The historian John Dower found that Japanese wartime films had been largely forgotten, as "losers do not get reruns", yet they were so subtle and skilful that Frank Capra thought Chocolate and Soldiers unbeatable. Heroes were typically low-ranking officers, not samurai , calmly devoted to his men and his country. These films did not personalise

16020-499: The concept of an all-big-gun ship had been in circulation for several years, it had yet to be validated in combat. Dreadnought sparked a new arms race , principally between Britain and Germany but reflected worldwide, as the new class of warships became a crucial element of national power. Technical development continued rapidly through the dreadnought era, with steep changes in armament, armor and propulsion. Ten years after Dreadnought ' s commissioning, much more powerful ships,

16198-654: The cost of authenticity. Although the 1918 Finnish Civil War between Whites and Reds remained a controversial topic a century later in Finland , many Finnish filmmakers have taken up the subject, often basing their work on a book. In 1957, Toivo Särkkä 's 1918 , based on Jarl Hemmer 's play and novel, was screened at the 7th Berlin International Film Festival . Recent films include Lauri Törhönen 's 2007 The Border , and Aku Louhimies 's 2008 Tears of April , based on Leena Lander 's novel. Perhaps

16376-465: The crew to abandon the ship as it rapidly capsizes. Some of the officers and ratings manage to find a life raft while being intermittently strafed by German planes. The story of the ship is told in flashbacks, using their memories. The first person to reveal his thoughts is Captain Kinross, who recalls the summer of 1939 when the Torrin is being rushed into commission as the possibility of war becomes

16554-502: The crew's loved ones. Kinross addresses the ship's survivors in a military depot in Alexandria in Egypt. He tells them that although they lost their ship and many friends, who now "lie together in fifteen hundred fathoms", he notes that these losses should inspire them to fight even harder in the battles to come. Captain Kinross then shakes hands with all the ratings as they leave the depot. When

16732-413: The cruel realities of this present war. None has yet done it so sharply and so truly as In Which We Serve ... For the great thing which Mr. Coward has accomplished in this film is a full and complete expression of national fortitude ... Yes, this is truly a picture in which the British may take a wholesome pride and we may regard as an excellent expression of British strength." Variety called

16910-478: The decisive Battle of Tsushima in 1905, the outcome of which significantly influenced the design of HMS Dreadnought . The launch of Dreadnought in 1906 commenced a new naval arms race. Three major fleet actions between steel battleships took place: the long-range gunnery duel at the Battle of the Yellow Sea in 1904, the decisive Battle of Tsushima in 1905 (both during the Russo-Japanese War ) and

17088-486: The destructive impact of American military presence on village life. The violent action films Shiri (1999) and Joint Security Area (2000) presented North Korea in a favourable light. Films in North Korea were made by government film studios and had clear political messages. The first was My Home Village (1949), on the liberation of Korea from the Japanese, presented as the work of Kim Il Sung without help from

17266-598: The end of World War I, aircraft had successfully adopted the torpedo as a weapon. In 1921 the Italian general and air theorist Giulio Douhet completed a hugely influential treatise on strategic bombing titled The Command of the Air , which foresaw the dominance of air power over naval units. In the 1920s, General Billy Mitchell of the United States Army Air Corps , believing that air forces had rendered navies around

17444-401: The enemy and therefore lacked hatred, though Great Britain could figure as the "cultural enemy". For Japanese film-makers, war was not a cause but more like a natural disaster, and "what mattered was not whom one fought but how well". Asian enemies, especially the Chinese, were often portrayed as redeemable and even possible marriage partners. Japanese wartime films do not glorify war, but present

17622-503: The entire breadth of the war. Some films deal with the human aspects of the war, such as The Red Badge of Courage (1951), or Shenandoah (1965), on the tragedy that the war inflicted on the civilian population. Ken Burns 's The Civil War is the most-watched documentary in the history of PBS . The first war films come from the Spanish–American War of 1898. Short "actualities"—documentary film-clips—included Burial of

17800-507: The eyes of a 13-year-old girl. Many Indonesian films deal with the occupation of the archipelago by the Japanese during the Second World War. Teguh Karya 's Doea Tanda Mata ( Mementos , literally "Two Eye Marks", 1985) covers the limited nationalist resistance to Dutch colonial rule in the 1930s. A third group of films such as Enam Djam di Jogja ( Six Hours in Yogyakarta , 1951) and Serangan Fajar ( Attack at Dawn , 1983) covers

17978-463: The facts", yet imply that "their version is as good as the truth". For example, he calls the 2000 American film U-571 a "shameless deception" for pretending that a US warship had helped to win the Battle of the Atlantic—seven months before America entered the war. He is equally critical of Christopher Nolan 's 2017 film Dunkirk with its unhistorically empty beaches, low-level air combat over

18156-840: The fate of the principal characters". This in turn pushes combat scenes to the climactic ends of war films. Not all critics agree, either, that war films must be about 20th-century wars. James Clarke includes Edward Zwick 's Oscar-winning Glory (1990) among the war films he discusses in detail; it is set in the American Civil War , and he lists six other films about that war which he considers "notable". The screenwriter and scholar Eric R. Williams identifies war films as one of eleven super-genres in his screenwriters' taxonomy , claiming that all feature-length narrative films can be classified as belonging to one of them. The British military historian Antony Beevor "despair[s]" at how film-makers from America and Britain "play fast and loose with

18334-506: The fighting, the successful South Korean action film Piagol about leftist guerrilla atrocities encouraged other film-makers. The 1960s military government punished pro-communist film-makers and gave Grand Bell Awards to films with the strongest anti-communist message. The Taebaek Mountains (1994) dealt with leftists from the south who fought for the communists, while Silver Stallion (1991) and Spring in My Hometown (1998) showed

18512-810: The film Pearl Harbor 's US-biased portrayal of events is a compensation for technical assistance received from the US armed forces, noting that the premiere was held on board a U.S. Navy carrier. In another case, the U.S. Navy objected to elements of Crimson Tide , especially mutiny on board an American naval vessel, so the film was produced without their assistance. The film historian Jonathan Rayner observes that such films "have also clearly been intended to serve vital propagandist, recruitment and public relations functions". The first Chinese war films were newsreels like Battle of Wuhan (1911) and Battle of Shanghai (1913). Still in films such as Xu Xinfu 's Battle Exploits (1925), war featured mainly as background. Only with

18690-421: The film "a grim tale sincerely picturized and splendidly acted throughout" and added, "Only one important factor calls for criticism. It is that all the details are too prolonged. The author-producer-scriptwriter-composer and co-director gives a fine performance as the captain of the vessel, but acting honors also go to the entire company. Stark realism is the keynote of the writing and depiction, with no glossing of

18868-400: The film's first-assistant director , took over the part (credited as "Mickey Anderson"). Coward was anxious that it succeed, not only because it was his first film project, but because he felt it was his contribution to the war effort and he wanted it to be perceived as such by the public. The première was a gala event held as a benefit for several naval charities and Coward was pleased to see

19046-591: The first formal unit of the Union Army during the American Civil War to be made up entirely of Black volunteers. Some films such as Gettysburg focused on a single battle during the war, or even on a single incident, like the French short film La Rivière du Hibou ( An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge ) and Disney 's The Great Locomotive Chase (1956). Others like the 1993 miniseries North and South spanned

19224-406: The first of several films on which the two would collaborate. Shooting began at Denham Studios on 5 February 1942. From the start, Coward was happy to let production crew members take charge in their areas of expertise while he concentrated on directing the actors and creating his own portrayal of Kinross. However, he soon became bored with the mechanics of filmmaking and after six weeks he came to

19402-508: The first shots of World War II with the bombardment of the Polish garrison at Westerplatte ; and the final surrender of the Japanese Empire took place aboard a United States Navy battleship, USS  Missouri . Between those two events, it had become clear that aircraft carriers were the new principal ships of the fleet and that battleships now performed a secondary role. Battleships played

19580-457: The futility and inhumanity of battle, the effects of war on society, and the moral and human issues raised by war. War films are often categorized by their milieu, such as the Korean War ; the most popular subjects are the Second World War and the American Civil War . The stories told may be fiction , historical drama , or biographical . Critics have noted similarities between the Western and

19758-508: The greatest screenplay ever written for the motion-picture medium"; Richard Attenborough 's satirical anti-war musical comedy based on Joan Littlewood 's play of the same name, Oh! What a Lovely War (1969); Spielberg's 2011 war drama War Horse was based on Michael Morpurgo 's children's novel of the same name . Many of the films promoted as "documentaries" added context to authentic battlefield scenes by staging critical events, and invented episodes and dialog to enhance excitement at

19936-407: The historical subject as suitable for the worsening situation facing Nazi Germany when it was filmed from October 1943 to August 1944. At over eight million marks, using thousands of soldiers as extras and 100 railway wagonloads of salt to simulate snow, it was the most costly German film made during the war. The actual siege ended with the surrender of the town; in the film, the French generals abandon

20114-457: The inconclusive Battle of Jutland in 1916, during the First World War . Jutland was the largest naval battle and the only full-scale clash of dreadnoughts of the war, and it was the last major battle in naval history fought primarily by battleships. The Naval Treaties of the 1920s and 1930s limited the number of battleships, though technical innovation in battleship design continued. Both

20292-481: The larger weapons when dealing with smaller fast-moving torpedo craft. Such was the case, albeit unsuccessfully, when the Russian battleship  Knyaz Suvorov at Tsushima had been sent to the bottom by destroyer -launched torpedoes. The 1903–04 design also retained traditional triple-expansion steam engines . As early as 1904, Jackie Fisher had been convinced of the need for fast, powerful ships with an all-big-gun armament. If Tsushima influenced his thinking, it

20470-412: The last Royal Navy battleship, the design was so successful he found little support for his plan to switch to a battlecruiser navy. Although there were some problems with the ship (the wing turrets had limited arcs of fire and strained the hull when firing a full broadside, and the top of the thickest armor belt lay below the waterline at full load), the Royal Navy promptly commissioned another six ships to

20648-565: The last battleship to be launched being HMS  Vanguard in 1944. Four battleships were retained by the United States Navy until the end of the Cold War for fire support purposes and were last used in combat during the Gulf War in 1991, and then struck from the U.S. Naval Vessel Register in the 2000s. Many World War II-era American battleships survive today as museum ships . A ship of

20826-468: The last man goes, the emotionally tired captain silently acknowledges his surviving officers before walking away. An epilogue concludes: Bigger and stronger ships are being launched to avenge the Torrin ; Britain is an island nation with a proud, indefatigable people; Captain Kinross is now in command of a battleship . Its massive main guns fire at the enemy. Shortly after his play Blithe Spirit opened in

21004-460: The last of the traditional war films, while the controversy around the help given by the U.S. Army and Zanuck's "disregard for Pentagon relations" changed the way that Hollywood and the Army collaborated. Zanuck, by then an executive at 20th Century Fox , set up an American–Japanese co-production for Richard Fleischer 's Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) to depict what "really happened on December 7, 1941" in

21182-442: The late 1880s to describe a type of ironclad warship , now referred to by historians as pre-dreadnought battleships . In 1906, the commissioning of HMS  Dreadnought into the United Kingdom 's Royal Navy heralded a revolution in the field of battleship design. Subsequent battleship designs, influenced by HMS Dreadnought , were referred to as " dreadnoughts ", though the term eventually became obsolete as dreadnoughts became

21360-454: The late 1970s about the Vietnam War actually depicted combat; exceptions include The Green Berets (1968). Critics such as Basinger explain that Hollywood avoided the subject because of opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War , making the subject divisive; in addition, the film industry was in crisis, and the army did not wish to assist in making anti-war films. From

21538-798: The late 1970s, independently financed and produced films showed Hollywood that Vietnam could be treated in film. Successful but very different portrayals of the war in which America had been defeated included Michael Cimino 's The Deer Hunter (1978), and Francis Ford Coppola 's Apocalypse Now (1979). With the shift in American politics to the right in the 1980s, military success could again be shown in films such as Oliver Stone 's Platoon (1986), Stanley Kubrick 's Full Metal Jacket (1987) and John Irvin 's Hamburger Hill (1987). The Vietnamese director Nguyễn Hồng Sến  [ vi ] 's The Abandoned Field: Free Fire Zone ( Cánh đồng hoang , 1979) gives an "unnerving and compelling .. subjective-camera-eye-view" of life under helicopter fire in

21716-463: The line was a large, unarmored wooden sailing ship which mounted a battery of up to 120 smoothbore guns and carronades , which came to prominence with the adoption of line of battle tactics in the early 17th century and the end of the sailing battleship's heyday in the 1830s. From 1794, the alternative term 'line of battle ship' was contracted (informally at first) to 'battle ship' or 'battleship'. The sheer number of guns fired broadside meant

21894-535: The many other films that are only just war films. However, other critics such as Russell Earl Shain propose a far broader definition of war film, to include films that deal "with the roles of civilians, espionage agents, and soldiers in any of the aspects of war (i.e. preparation, cause, prevention, conduct, daily life, and consequences or aftermath.)" Neale points out that genres overlap, with combat scenes for different purposes in other types of film, and suggests that war films are characterised by combat which "determines

22072-528: The metaphor of hunting to criticise the aggressiveness of Spanish fascism . It won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 16th Berlin International Film Festival in 1966. Ken Loach 's Land and Freedom ( Tierra y Libertad , 1995), loosely based on George Orwell 's Homage to Catalonia , follows a British communist through the war to reveal the painful contradictions within the anti-fascist Republican side. Samuel Fuller 's The Steel Helmet (1951)

22250-415: The mid-1870s steel was used as a construction material alongside iron and wood. The French Navy's Redoutable , laid down in 1873 and launched in 1876, was a central battery and barbette warship which became the first battleship in the world to use steel as the principal building material. The term "battleship" was officially adopted by the Royal Navy in the re-classification of 1892. By the 1890s, there

22428-641: The most famous film about the Finnish Civil War is Edvin Laine 's 1968 Here, Beneath the North Star , based on the first two books of Väinö Linna 's Under the North Star trilogy; it describing the civil war from the losing side, Finland's Red Guards . The Spanish Civil War has attracted directors from different countries. Sam Wood 's For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), based on Ernest Hemingway 's book of

22606-465: The non-intervention blockade. On May 29, 1937, two Republican aircraft managed to bomb the German pocket battleship Deutschland outside Ibiza , causing severe damage and loss of life. Admiral Scheer retaliated two days later by bombarding Almería , causing much destruction, and the resulting Deutschland incident meant the end of German and Italian participation in non-intervention. The Schleswig-Holstein —an obsolete pre-dreadnought —fired

22784-448: The only type of battleship in common use. Battleships dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and were a symbol of naval dominance and national might, and for decades were a major intimidation factor for power projection in both diplomacy and military strategy . A global arms race in battleship construction began in Europe in the 1890s and culminated at

22962-465: The popular Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) starring John Wayne . U.S. Marines considered Sands of Iwo Jima visually authentic, but found Lewis Milestone's Battle Cry (1955), with its attention to the lives of the men, the more realistic film. The formula for a successful war film consisted, according to Lawrence Suid, of a small group of ethnically diverse men; an unreasonable senior officer; cowards became heroic, or died. Jeanine Basinger suggests that

23140-507: The portrayal is genuinely more realistic. Jeanine Basinger notes that critics experienced it as "groundbreaking and anti-generic", with, in James Wolcott's words, a "desire to bury the cornball, recruiting poster legend of John Wayne: to get it right this time"; and that combat films have always been "grounded in the need to help an audience understand and accept war". Its success revived interest in World War II films. Others tried to portray

23318-474: The propaganda value of film, to publicise both victories and German atrocities. Ilya Kopalin's documentary Moscow Strikes Back ( Russian : Разгром немецких войск под Москвой , literally "The rout of the German troops near Moscow"), was made during the Battle of Moscow between October 1941 and January 1942. It depicted civilians helping to defend the city, the parade in Red Square and Stalin 's speech rousing

23496-456: The psychological battle between officers and egotism rather than events during the war. The Bridge on the River Kwai brought a new complexity to the war picture, with a sense of moral uncertainty surrounding war. By the end of the decade the "sense of shared achievement" which had been common in war films "began to evaporate", according to Pulver. Hollywood films in the 1950s and 1960s could display spectacular heroics or self-sacrifice, as in

23674-707: The reality of the war, as in Joseph Vilsmaier 's Stalingrad (1993), which The New York Times said "goes about as far as a movie can go in depicting modern warfare as a stomach-turning form of mass slaughter". Many war films have been produced with the cooperation of a nation's military forces. Since the Second World War, the United States Navy has provided ships and technical guidance for films such as Top Gun . The U.S. Air Force assisted with The Big Lift , Strategic Air Command and A Gathering of Eagles , which were filmed on Air Force bases; Air Force personnel appeared in many roles. Critics have argued that

23852-399: The reintegration of veterans. The fateful nature of battle scenes means that war films often end with them. The film critic Stephen Neale suggests that the genre is for the most part well defined and uncontentious, since war films are simply those about war being waged in the 20th century, with combat scenes central to the drama. However, Neale notes, films set in the American Civil War or

24030-470: The rules, and sank the ship within minutes in a coordinated attack. The stunt made headlines, and Mitchell declared, "No surface vessels can exist wherever air forces acting from land bases are able to attack them." While far from conclusive, Mitchell's test was significant because it put proponents of the battleship against naval aviation on the defensive. Rear Admiral William A. Moffett used public relations against Mitchell to make headway toward expansion of

24208-719: The sacrifices constantly being made by the sailors." Despite largely positive reviews by audiences and critics alike, the film was not well received by some within the Admiralty who dubbed it " In Which We Sink ". On Christmas Eve 1942 in New York the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures honoured the film as the Best English Language Film of the Year , citing Bernard Miles and John Mills for their performances. The film

24386-439: The same broadside, despite having two fewer guns. In 1897, before the revolution in design brought about by HMS  Dreadnought , the Royal Navy had 62 battleships in commission or building, a lead of 26 over France and 50 over Germany. From the 1906 launching of Dreadnought , an arms race with major strategic consequences was prompted. Major naval powers raced to build their own dreadnoughts. Possession of modern battleships

24564-588: The same name , portrays the fated romance between an American played by Gary Cooper and a partisan played by Ingrid Bergman against the backdrop of the civil war. The epic 168-minute film with its landscapes shot in Technicolor and a "beautiful" orchestral score was a success both with audiences and with critics. Alain Resnais 's Guernica (1950) uses Picasso 's 1937 painting of the same name to protest against war. Carlos Saura 's La Caza (The Hunt, 1966) uses

24742-510: The sea, and rescues mainly by the "little ships". Beevor feels, however, that Continental European film-makers are often "far more scrupulous"; for example, in his view the 2004 German film Downfall accurately depicted the historical events of Hitler's final days in his Berlin bunker, and he considers the 1965 French film The 317th Platoon , set in Vietnam, "the greatest war movie ever made". The 1966 film The Battle of Algiers is, he argues,

24920-586: The seafront at Plymouth Hoe was used for the shore-leave scenes between Shorty Blake (Mills) and his wife Freda ( Kay Walsh ). The film was the second most popular movie at the British box office in 1943. (According to Kinematograph Weekly the film was the most popular.) The film was one of the most successful British films ever released in the US, earning $ 1.8 million in rentals ($ 24.6 million in 2023 dollars). Bosley Crowther of The New York Times observed, "There have been other pictures which have vividly and movingly conveyed in terms of human emotion

25098-467: The ship of the line concept was the introduction of steam power as an auxiliary propulsion system . Steam power was gradually introduced to the navy in the first half of the 19th century, initially for small craft and later for frigates . The French Navy introduced steam to the line of battle with the 90-gun Napoléon in 1850 —the first true steam battleship. Napoléon was armed as a conventional ship-of-the-line, but her steam engines could give her

25276-471: The siege. For Japan, the war began with the undeclared war and invasion of China in 1937 , which the Japanese authorities called "The China Incident". The government dispatched a "pen brigade" to write and film the action in China with "humanist values". Tomotaka Tasaka 's Mud and Soldiers (1939) for instance, shot on location in China, Kōzaburō Yoshimura 's Legend of Tank Commander Nishizumi , and Sato Takeshi 's Chocolate and Soldiers (1938) show

25454-486: The sinking of HMS  Kelly on 23 May 1941 was still on Coward's mind, he decided to use the ship's demise as the basis for his script. Mountbatten, aware that there was some public antipathy to his political ambitions, agreed to support the project as long as it was not a conspicuous biography of his own experiences. In order to do research, Coward visited the naval base in Plymouth , where Michael Redgrave , with whom he

25632-455: The story is based on incidents from his own life. The Iraq War served as the background story of U.S. movies, like The Hurt Locker from 2008, Green Zone from 2010, and American Sniper from 2014. The War in Afghanistan since 2001 was depicted in various movies, among them Restrepo in 2010 and Lone Survivor from 2013. The first popular Allied war films made during

25810-472: The strategic position had changed. In Germany , the ambitious Plan Z for naval rearmament was abandoned in favor of a strategy of submarine warfare supplemented by the use of battlecruisers and commerce raiding (in particular by Bismarck -class battleships). In Britain, the most pressing need was for air defenses and convoy escorts to safeguard the civilian population from bombing or starvation, and re-armament construction plans consisted of five ships of

25988-543: The studio only when scenes in which he appeared were being filmed. At one point, he invited the royal family to the set and newsreel footage of their visit proved to be good publicity for the film. During the filming, the character of Albert Fosdike, "Shorty" Blake's brother-in-law, was recast after actor William Hartnell turned up late for his first day of shooting. Coward berated Hartnell in front of cast and crew for his unprofessionalism. He then made him personally apologise to everyone before sacking him. Michael Anderson ,

26166-643: The super-dreadnoughts, were being built. In the first years of the 20th century, several navies worldwide experimented with the idea of a new type of battleship with a uniform armament of very heavy guns. Admiral Vittorio Cuniberti , the Italian Navy's chief naval architect, articulated the concept of an all-big-gun battleship in 1903. When the Regia Marina did not pursue his ideas, Cuniberti wrote an article in Jane ' s proposing an "ideal" future British battleship,

26344-528: The superstructure, and they would be more effective against smaller ships such as cruisers . Smaller guns (12-pounders and smaller) were reserved for protecting the battleship against the threat of torpedo attack from destroyers and torpedo boats . The beginning of the pre-dreadnought era coincided with Britain reasserting her naval dominance. For many years previously, Britain had taken naval supremacy for granted. Expensive naval projects were criticized by political leaders of all inclinations. However, in 1888

26522-531: The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor . The film, panned by Roger Ebert and The New York Times , was a major success in Japan. Its realistic-looking attack footage was reused in later films such as Midway (1976), The Final Countdown (1980), and Australia (2008). The story was revisited in Pearl Harbor (2001), described by The New York Times as a "noisy, expensive and very long new blockbuster", with

26700-479: The technical innovations of the ironclad. Turrets, armor plate, and steam engines were all improved over the years, and torpedo tubes were also introduced. A small number of designs, including the American Kearsarge and Virginia classes , experimented with all or part of the 8-inch intermediate battery superimposed over the 12-inch primary. Results were poor: recoil factors and blast effects resulted in

26878-542: The third, Shinano , was later completed as a carrier) and a planned fourth was cancelled. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War , the Spanish navy included only two small dreadnought battleships, España and Jaime I . España (originally named Alfonso XIII ), by then in reserve at the northwestern naval base of El Ferrol , fell into Nationalist hands in July 1936. The crew aboard Jaime I remained loyal to

27056-458: The threat posed to dreadnought battleships proved to have been largely a false alarm. HMS Audacious turned out to be the only dreadnought sunk by a submarine in World War I. While battleships were never intended for anti-submarine warfare, there was one instance of a submarine being sunk by a dreadnought battleship. HMS Dreadnought rammed and sank the German submarine U-29 on March 18, 1915, off

27234-580: The time of the famous clash of the USS ; Monitor and the CSS ; Virginia at the Battle of Hampton Roads at least eight navies possessed ironclad ships. Navies experimented with the positioning of guns, in turrets (like the USS Monitor ), central-batteries or barbettes , or with the ram as the principal weapon. As steam technology developed, masts were gradually removed from battleship designs. By

27412-449: The vast resources spent on building battlefleets. Even in spite of their huge firepower and protection, battleships were increasingly vulnerable to much smaller and relatively inexpensive weapons: initially the torpedo and the naval mine , and later attack aircraft and the guided missile . The growing range of naval engagements led to the aircraft carrier replacing the battleship as the leading capital ship during World War II, with

27590-509: The war and was made in cooperation with the Army Air Corps. It proved a powerful recruiting tool. It became the first film (in any genre) to be awarded an Oscar for best picture. Later films of varied genres that deal with the First World War include David Lean 's "colossal epic", both war film and biopic Lawrence of Arabia (1962), shot in the then unfamiliar and exciting 70mm Technicolor , and described by Steven Spielberg as "maybe

27768-493: The war effort, and a degree of propaganda. Newsreels , ostensibly simply for information, were made in both Allied and Axis countries, and were often dramatised. More recently, in the Iran–Iraq War , Morteza Avini 's Ravayat-e Fath (Chronicles of Victory) television series combined front-line footage with commentary. Sergei Eisenstein 's 1938 historical drama Alexander Nevsky depicts Prince Alexander 's defeat of

27946-449: The war film genre and the Western. Both genres use opposing concepts like war and peace, civilization and savagery. War films usually frame World War II as a conflict between "good" and "evil" as represented by the Allied forces and Nazi Germany whereas the Western portrays the conflict between civilized settlers and the savage indigenous peoples. James Clarke notes the similarity between

28124-403: The war film. Nations such as China, Indonesia, Japan, and Russia have their own traditions of war film, centred on their own revolutionary wars but taking varied forms, from action and historical drama to wartime romance. Subgenres, not necessarily distinct, include anti-war , comedy , propaganda , and documentary . There are similarly subgenres of the war film in specific theatres such as

28302-478: The war wore on however, it turned out that whilst submarines did prove to be a very dangerous threat to older pre-dreadnought battleships, as shown by examples such as the sinking of Mesûdiye , which was caught in the Dardanelles by a British submarine and HMS  Majestic and HMS  Triumph were torpedoed by U-21 as well as HMS  Formidable , HMS  Cornwallis , HMS  Britannia etc.,

28480-686: The war years" — Millions Like Us (1943), and The Way Ahead (1944). In America, documentaries were produced in various ways: General Marshall commissioned the Why We Fight propaganda series from Frank Capra; the War Department's Information-Education Division started out making training films for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy; the Army made its own through the U.S. Signal Corps, including John Huston 's The Battle of San Pietro . Hollywood made films with propaganda messages about America's allies, such as Mrs. Miniver (1942), which portrayed

28658-568: The war, French ironclad floating batteries used similar weapons against the defenses at the Battle of Kinburn . Nevertheless, wooden-hulled ships stood up comparatively well to shells, as shown in the 1866 Battle of Lissa , where the modern Austrian steam two-decker SMS  Kaiser ranged across a confused battlefield, rammed an Italian ironclad and took 80 hits from Italian ironclads, many of which were shells, but including at least one 300-pound shot at point-blank range. Despite losing her bowsprit and her foremast, and being set on fire, she

28836-625: The weights of ships. Designs like the projected British N3-class battleship, the first American South Dakota class , and the Japanese Kii class —all of which continued the trend to larger ships with bigger guns and thicker armor—never got off the drawing board. Those designs which were commissioned during this period were referred to as treaty battleships . As early as 1914, the British Admiral Percy Scott predicted that battleships would soon be made irrelevant by aircraft . By

29014-468: The world obsolete, testified in front of Congress that "1,000 bombardment airplanes can be built and operated for about the price of one battleship" and that a squadron of these bombers could sink a battleship, making for more efficient use of government funds. This infuriated the U.S. Navy, but Mitchell was nevertheless allowed to conduct a careful series of bombing tests alongside Navy and Marine bombers. In 1921, he bombed and sank numerous ships, including

29192-462: Was an increasing similarity between battleship designs, and the type that later became known as the 'pre-dreadnought battleship' emerged. These were heavily armored ships, mounting a mixed battery of guns in turrets, and without sails. The typical first-class battleship of the pre-dreadnought era displaced 15,000 to 17,000  tons , had a speed of 16 knots (30 km/h), and an armament of four 12-inch (305 mm) guns in two turrets fore and aft with

29370-574: Was described by the Motion Picture News as "a really good war story, which is exceptional". The 1916 British film The Battle of the Somme , by two official cinematographers, Geoffrey Malins and John McDowell, combined documentary and propaganda, seeking to give the public an impression of what trench warfare was like. Much of the film was shot on location at the Western Front in France; it had

29548-411: Was effective beyond visual range and effective in complete darkness or adverse weather, was introduced to supplement optical fire control. Even when war threatened again in the late 1930s, battleship construction did not regain the level of importance it had held in the years before World War I. The "building holiday" imposed by the naval treaties meant the capacity of dockyards worldwide had shrunk, and

29726-680: Was filmed on location on the Dunstable Downs in Bedfordshire . Although the filmmakers took great care to conceal locations because of wartime censorship, scenes were shot at Plymouth 's naval dockyard in Devon and the naval station on the Isle of Portland . For example, the departure of Blake and Hardy was filmed in front of Devonport's original main entrance, the Keyham Dock Gate. Smeaton's Tower on

29904-500: Was followed by large-scale but thoughtful films like Andrei Tarkovsky 's Ivan's Childhood (1962), and quasi- documentary all-star epics filmed in Europe such as Battle of the Bulge (1965), Battle of Britain (1969), The Battle of Neretva (1969), Midway (1976), and A Bridge Too Far (1977). In Lawrence Suid's view, The Longest Day "served as the model for all subsequent combat spectaculars". However, its cost also made it

30082-425: Was in a relationship at the time, was stationed. He also visited Portsmouth and the Home Fleet at Scapa Flow , where he sailed on HMS  Nigeria . Coward spent the final months of 1941 drafting a screenplay. However, when he submitted it to Havelock-Allan, the producer told him the film would run between eight and nine hours if it was made as written because it included lengthy scenes in Paris , China , and

30260-451: Was made during the Korean War (1950–1953). The critic Guy Westwell notes that it questioned the conduct of the war, as did later films like The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954) and Pork Chop Hill (1959). Fuller agreed that all his films were anti-war. No Hollywood films about the Korean War did well at the box office; the historian Lary May suggested in 2001 that they reminded American viewers of "the only war we have lost". In 1955, after

30438-489: Was nominated in the 1943 Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay (losing out to Casablanca and Princess O'Rourke respectively). However, Coward was presented with an Academy Honorary Award for "his outstanding production achievement." In Which We Serve also won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Film (beating Casablanca ) and the Argentine Film Critics Association Award for Best Foreign Film in 1943. A Region 2 DVD with

30616-425: Was not only seen as vital to naval power, but also, as with nuclear weapons after World War II , represented a nation's standing in the world. Germany , France , Japan , Italy , Austria , and the United States all began dreadnought programmes; while the Ottoman Empire , Argentina , Russia , Brazil , and Chile commissioned dreadnoughts to be built in British and American yards. By virtue of geography,

30794-400: Was ready for action again the very next day. The development of high-explosive shells made the use of iron armor plate on warships necessary. In 1859 France launched Gloire , the first ocean-going ironclad warship. She had the profile of a ship of the line, cut to one deck due to weight considerations. Although made of wood and reliant on sail for most journeys, Gloire was fitted with

30972-430: Was released from his internment as an enemy alien to work on the film at Coward's insistence. MI5 supplied Ann Elwell as his secretary. She was translating for him as he took on the role of art director and she also did some scriptwriting. Coward could handle the direction of the actors but would be at a loss with the action scenes, so he asked David Lean to supervise the filming of those. In Which We Serve proved to be

31150-402: Was restricted to skirmishes. In the Baltic Sea , action was largely limited to the raiding of convoys, and the laying of defensive minefields; the only significant clash of battleship squadrons there was the Battle of Moon Sound at which one Russian pre-dreadnought was lost. The Adriatic was in a sense the mirror of the North Sea: the Austro-Hungarian dreadnought fleet remained bottled up by

31328-425: Was sunk by destroyers during the night phase of the Battle of Jutland. The German High Seas Fleet, for their part, were determined not to engage the British without the assistance of submarines; and since the submarines were needed more for raiding commercial traffic, the fleet stayed in port for much of the war. For many years, Germany simply had no battleships. The Armistice with Germany required that most of

31506-441: Was to persuade him of the need to standardise on 12-inch (305 mm) guns. Fisher's concerns were submarines and destroyers equipped with torpedoes, then threatening to outrange battleship guns, making speed imperative for capital ships . Fisher's preferred option was his brainchild, the battlecruiser : lightly armored but heavily armed with eight 12-inch guns and propelled to 25 knots (46 km/h) by steam turbines . It

31684-447: Was to prove this revolutionary technology that Dreadnought was designed in January 1905, laid down in October 1905 and sped to completion by 1906. She carried ten 12-inch guns, had an 11-inch armor belt, and was the first large ship powered by turbines. She mounted her guns in five turrets; three on the centerline (one forward, two aft) and two on the wings , giving her at her launch twice the broadside of any other warship. She retained

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