The Great War in American

This book recounts the reception of selected films about the Great War released between 1918 and 1938 in the USA and Great Britain. It discusses the role that popular cinema played in forming and reflecting public opinion about the War and its political and cultural aftermath in both countries. Although the centenary has produced a wide number of studies on the memorialisation of the Great War in Britain and to a lesser degree the USA, none of them focused on audience reception in relation to the Anglo-American ‘circulatory system’ of Trans-Atlantic culture.

A chronicle of the American experience during World War I and the unexpected changes that rocked the country in its immediate aftermath—the Red Scare, race riots, women’s suffrage, and Prohibition.

The "Great War" brought death and destruction to mankind on a worldwide scale. In all the countries involved in it, the new medium of film was used to bear witness to both. Even after 1918 filmmakers continued to return to the war, this time to tell stories of death and loss, but also, and mainly, of courage, patriotism and sacrifice. Film historians Leen Engelen and Bénédicte Rochet discuss the fascinating relationship between war and film, both in the fiction film "La Belgique martyre" and in the documentary "To the Glory of the Belgian Private".