Films of the Time
In Hollywood, 1937 was hands-down known for Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Cottrell/Hand) at the box office, with gross revenues exceeding $185 million.
While the second most popular film in the United States that year was The Good Earth, a prewar film about the struggle of a Chinese family to survive during drought or locusts, many other films remain poplar today. A number of romantic dramas were also popular at the box office, including Greta Garbo’s Conquest (Brown), Judy Garland’s A Star is Born (Wellman), and Katherine Hepburn’s A Stage Door (La Cava). And, of course, Shirley Temple shined in Heidi.
The 1930s was also a prolific time internationally for historical war films, several of which have parallel themes of common humanity and pacifism. In 1931, John Robertson made Beyond Victory, a film about a non-commissioned American officer and a wealthy American officer, who are charged with the task of retaining control of a French town. The two men are badly injured during battle and imprisoned in a German hospital. The non-commissioned officer had been engaged to a German immigrant, but believes because of the war, that love is doomed. Surprisingly, she returned to Germany and is his nurse at the hospital. They are reunited and, after the war, married.
Other war films of that time period include the United Kingdom’s Forever England (Ford/Asquith, 1935), which tells the story of an illegitimate son of a naval officer who single-handedly brings about the destruction of a World War I German cruiser while a prisoner. He dies before knowing his success. Warner Brothers also released in 1933 Captured! (Chodorov), a tale of a newly-married British Captain’s unsuccessful escape attempts from prison, the intrigues of almost having a fellow officer executed for a crime he did not commit because he was having an affair with the Captain’s wife, and the final tragic escape that results in the Captain’s death, while the German commandant salutes his dead body.
Howard Hawks’ 1930 Hollywood film, The Dawn Patrol, about a British flight squad in War I stationed in France, the short life-span of such pilots, and the emotional impact on the commander of sending such young men into fairly certain death. Everything is Thunder (Rosmer, 1936) showed a British officer’s repeated attempts to escape from a World War I German prison camp.
And, of course, there is Howard Hughes Hell’s Angels (1930), which shows the internal and external conflicts of loyalty, treason, and questionable morals between two British brothers who have to fight their best friend, who has been conscripted into the German army. James Whales would have similar success with World War I films Journey’s End (1930) and Waterloo Bridge (1931).
Germany also had its share of World War I films, including Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s Westfront 1918 (1930), which had a pacifist message but was well-received until the Nazi’s rise in power.
Source: The Internet Movie Database. Other sources consulted: O’Shaughnessy, 2011, 7.
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