Terrence Malick's "The Thin Red Line" and Hollywood's Traditional Depictions of War
THEThin Red Line is a three-hour epic about the World War II, directed by Terrence Malick, who made his comeback to the film industry after 20 years with a subject that had been neglected for almost as long.(1) The film is based on James Jones ' novel, published in 1962, which was first adapted for the big screen by Andrew Marton in 1964 rather unsuccessfully. For many years, the book seemed to defy cinematic adaptation due to its deliberately choppy, episodic storyline, its lack of a single heroic protagonist and the multiplicity of perspectives.(2) However, Malick tried to overcome these obstacles by creating a film which broke "most of the commercial rules about narrative and drama"(3), as a critic observes. My interest in The Thin Red Line is therefore twofold: firstly, I will try to explore the ambivalent nature of its narrative which oscillates between the Hollywood tradition and art-cinema narration and secondly, I will focus on the representations of war, in an attempt to compare them to the World War II films of the past.
World War II stands out as an intriguing period in the history of Hollywood cinema. After the bombardment of Pearl Harbor and the American involvement in the war in 1941, the Hollywood industry was eager to express its wholesale commitment to the imperatives of war. As Tomas Schatz observes, "never before or since have the interests of the nation and the movie industry been so closely aligned, and never has Hollywood 's status as a national cinema been so vital".(4) Hollywood 's prompt mobilization, combined with the prominent role of cinema as the dominant mass medium at the time, turned the Second World War into the most thoroughly documented and dramatized event in history(5) Since television and the 24-hour transmission of images were not yet available, it was the motion pictures that brought the war to the wide public through the vast production of newsreels, documentaries and dramatic features. However, despite the abundance of
World War II stands out as an intriguing period in the history of Hollywood cinema. After the bombardment of Pearl Harbor and the American involvement in the war in 1941, the Hollywood industry was eager to express its wholesale commitment to the imperatives of war. As Tomas Schatz observes, "never before or since have the interests of the nation and the movie industry been so closely aligned, and never has Hollywood 's status as a national cinema been so vital".(4) Hollywood 's prompt mobilization, combined with the prominent role of cinema as the dominant mass medium at the time, turned the Second World War into the most thoroughly documented and dramatized event in history(5) Since television and the 24-hour transmission of images were not yet available, it was the motion pictures that brought the war to the wide public through the vast production of newsreels, documentaries and dramatic features. However, despite the abundance of
Bibliography: # Bates, M. J., The Wars we took to Vietnam: Cultural conflict and storytelling, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996. # Bordwell, D., Narration in the Fiction Film, London: Routledge, 1986. # Corrigan, T., A cinema without walls: movies and culture after Vietnam, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1991. # Dick, B., The Star-spangled screen: The American world war II film, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1985. # Doherty, T., Projections of war: Hollywood, American culture and World War II, New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. # Hodgkins, J., "In the Wake of Desert Storm: A consideration of Modern World War II Films," Journal of Popular Film and Television, vol. 30, nr. 2 (Summer 2002), p. 74-84. # Kane, K., R., Critical Analysis of World War II Combat Films 1942-45, Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International, 1981. # Landy, M., Cinematic uses of the past, Minnesota, London: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. # Lichty, L.W. and Carroll, R. L, "Fragments of fear: Platoon(1986)", in O 'Connor, J. and Jackson, M., American History, American film: interpreting the Hollywood Image, 1998. # Manvell, R., Films and the second world war, New York: Delta, 1974 McCarthy, T., "Malick draws a ravishing ‘line, '" Variety, No # Rosenstone, R., "The future of the past", in Sobchack, V., The persistence of history: cinema, television and the modern event, New York and London: Routledge, 1996. # Schatz, T. "World War II and the Hollywood "war film" ', in Browne, N. (ed.), Refiguring American film genres: history and films, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998, pp. 89-128. # Shull, M.S. and Wilt, E. D., Hollywood war films 1937-1945, North Carolina and London: McFarland and Co., 1996. # Solomon, S.J., Beyond Formula: American film genres, Harcourt Brace, Jovanovich, 1976. # Stam, R., Burgoyne, R. and Flitterman-Lewis, S., New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics: Structuralism, Post-structuralism and Beyond, London: Routledge, 1992. # Whalen, T., "Maybe all men got one big soul: the hoax within the metaphysics of Terrence Malick 's The thin red line", Literature/Film Quarterly, vol. 27, nr. 3, 1999, pp. 162-6.