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WAR EMOTIONS EFFECT ON FLIM

Nick Russo
UWRT 1102: Writing and Inquiry in Academic Contexts II
November 1, 2014

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BACKGROUND INFORMATION
We made it--England the allied high command--we had quite the long, hard and
miserable journey, but it was all well worth it to have escaped from the German prisoner of war
camp. The trip had many unique stops that could have been disastrous along the way. I will show
you the journey we had through a screen play of our escape from the horrifying German prisoner
of war camp.
Scene 1 the beginning three prisoners of war named Bobby, Joe, and Steve that have
been sent to a stalag in the middle of Germany. There is about 200 prisoners in the camp and the
camp is approximately 40 miles from the North Sea. Bobby, Joe and Steve were talking and
came to the conclusion that we would never get out of this miserable place; however, there is an
officer in our camp that had some connections outside the camp. This officers name is Col.
Hogan. He would talk to London on a secret radio. The connections that Hogan has to the
outside world are people the Germans called the underground, they classified these people as
traitors to the third Reich and spys, and they helped them to escape. Joe and his friends had been
talking to Hogan and they got the ok and then decided to dig a tunnel out from our barracks.
Scene 2 the Escape On their journey they were helped by these people dressed as
innkeepers merchants and other people. Thank god for Steve to be a great impersonator of
German voices. They were all dressed in civilian clothes with maps identification papers and
small amounts of food. The people in the underground were at specific check points along the
way. The goal of their escape was to get to the English Channel where they would get picked up
by an English submarine. This is the end of their story of the escapes from the Nazis. This is an
example of a screen play from the time around WWII.

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Over the past fifty years the film industry and war time scenarios have changed a lot in
the way of plots, reasoning, and philosophy behind the films. There is however one thing that
remains very different in the films from the past fifty years to now. Throughout this paper we
will explore the evolution of the war time films genre; also we will investigate the reason for the
creation of the Prisoner of War genre during World War II along with the portrayal of the genre
in the period.
Before I go in to any detail I feel the need to explain my relations to the topic. My
feelings on this topic are that the truth should always be revealed. I am not an active or past
soldier or past veteran; however, most of my family are veterans my grandpa was in WWII and I
have a couple of uncles that were in Vietnam. As an avid Hogans Heroes watcher I have a love
for the comical story that is portrayed. I love the system of tunnels and the way that they operate
in a prisoner of war camp. I have been watching these kinds of shows and movies for about five
years. I have been to Germany myself and seen the people and the history over there. I am not a
reader by any means and I get a lot of important information from movies, TV Shows, and
documentaries.

LITERACY REVIEW
The major countries of the allies were the ones that most worried about hiding the truth.
Three articles stand out above the rest for the emotions of these dramatic films Mr. Royer helps
to explain how the French cinemas have evolved over the years of war in all the countries. They
use a very unique phrase in this article that is very intriguing to talk about the types of fill that
are made and it goes Just as written history is not a solid and unproblematic object, but a mode
of thought, so is the historical film said by Mr. Royer. In the French theater they made it

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apparent to avoided all of the harsh content so that the people would not get worried and it was
felt that it was not good for morale (Royer, 2012). Then, Mr. Elliott has a very unique side of the
film to look at is in his eyes the movies play to the peoples emotions and it evokes a lot of
heighten emotions; he write an autobiography that mentions way of escapes in films TV shows
the critical part of this is that it is the Americans point. Some movies that he mentions that show
this in action are Rambo First Blood part 2 and the biggest film is the Great Escape, this movie
shows how 70 prisoners attempted to escape. With these movies and many more they all have
those people that we call intrepid heroes. Mr. Elliott has gone on to reference another show that
was played around 1965 it is called Hogans Heroes and it is a sitcom that shows a prisoner of
war that chooses to stay behind to help others to escape from Germany(Gruner, 1993). Next, Mr.
Cull states that the war played a huge part in the life of the English and that they had created the
prisoner of war genre and it was filled with post war phenomena; the genre was started in 1946
and it spanned all the way to 1963 with the movie The Great Escape. The genre was claimed
to be authentic implicit and explicit to give a sense of the truth of the time; they felt that it was
important for the English community. Prior to that time the war genre was composed of mostly
memories of former war vets. The stories that the vets told is what gave them bases for how the
TV shows and or movies would be made; the overall plot as explained by Mr. Cull is that the
prisoners would all cause trouble for the Germans at all times and that they would end up with
tunnels that they would use for escaping(Cull, 2014).
The reason these films were so successful was the secrets to escapes in the films. Hogans
Heroes is a show that was started in 1965 as a motivational piece; the reason for this piece of
acting done by Hollywood was to make the tragedies of the time period not as terrible, but
instead they wanted to show a different side of the camps. In this observation I have received a

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notion of a camp that the commandant and the prisoners get along good and they lived together
in a kind of harmony. This all and all is what would be called propaganda and this gives me
explicit examples of the type of things that the prisoners would do by trying to escape and or
punish the German war effort at all cost (Russo, 2014). Then, a very sneaky side of the WWII
film study arose; you look at the spys that are on both sides and how they affect what is going
on with the war. The spys are always looking for other spys, the reason for this is that they like
life in their own world and spys can tell when there is another around. In this article it is talking
about the reasons for some of this happening around the war is by the spys messing around and
causing trouble (Rubenstein, 2000).
Last but not least, Mr. Pringle and his associates are very descriptive with the way that
they explain the POW camps of WWII; they explain them as how the prisoners were separated
by their ranks and by the outfit that they are in and they called them weird German names. They
did reiterate that the activity of most prisoners was digging escape tunnels, the rough estimate is
that about 60 tunnels were dug per year and trying to break out; however they did not all want to
participate in this therefore some would rather try their luck going over or under the fences of the
camps. Even in these camps they had developed escape committees and they were common in
different parts of the camps; however, when the escapes would be attempted only a few at a time
would be able to escape in a tunnel. In this book it was very descriptive of the camp that the
prisoners are stuck in (Pringle, Doyle, Babits, 2007). The chapter of the book is called the month
of escapes. It starts off with the prisoners saying that their chance to escape is slowly diminishing
unless that they move fast. They had twenty eight other prisoners try to escape but they all got
caught and with each escape the window got tighter. In this chapter they talk about the prisoner
of war camp as a castle; that is what it felt like to them. In this chapter it talks about the way that

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they sustained life in the camp at Coldits, they said that it was imprisonment twenty four hours a
day seven days a week; and that they would get so board and the only way to get rid themselves
of the boredom was to play games or organize events. Most of the inhabitants were British
soldiers. Eventually they organized a thing called the Olympic Games and the book says that the
British never listened and that where ever they were supposed to be there never was one. It was a
fun in games until the British tried to escape during the closing ceremonies (Chancellor, 2001).
ENTERING THE CONVERSATION
During war time it is very uneasy and peoples emotions are much effected. In the
French cinemas they made it apparent to not show what was actually going on in the war. They
were not the only ones to do that all of the major allied powers were doing this. The next ones
were the English, it was said by Mr. Elliot how the cinemas where making movies that made the
Germans different than they actually were. One of the films made by the English was The Great
Escape now the Americans also made a film but it was more of a TV show that was like the
English movie and it was called Hogan`s Heroes. The filmmakers of the time were very good
at what they did and these countries felt that it was necessary to reclassify these films.
The real world situations are sometimes unbearable to think about. World War II was a
hard time for the allied powers, the countries are America, France and, England. The major
thing that was going on was the propaganda for after the war to keep all the harsh events out of
the media. This is also during the time of the Jewish concentration camps. The knowledge of
these events brought on great oppression to a countrys spirit, this spirit leads to moral. What
really happened to the prisoners of war were some of the most horrific thing that could happen.
The film industry plays a key role in our lives and it can influence our judgments. The
question that comes from these two sides of this conversation is why not tell everyone what was

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really happening in the war. What really happens during that time is so crucial to the emotions
that we have. Over the many years the film world has changed in what movies and TV shows
can show and how much they show. In this time period I feel that there is more freedom as to
what gets shown.
Films during the time of WWII a lot of stuff was going on with the war with the axis
powers especially Germany; therefore there was a need for a specific genre for the movies about
the war and it is known as the POW genre. The films that were made during this time were like
Hogans Heroes, The Great Escape, and Von Ryans Express. In these films they all shared
somewhat of a common relation. These productions all portrayed the Germans as incompetent
fools primarily. They also allowed the prisoners of war to run their camps with operations of
escaping using things like radios, trains, and tunnels. The prisoners were well taken care of and
were protected by what was known as the Geneva Convention. This genre was made to hide the
realities of war.
Film structure in this day in age we show everything. One video that I have watched is
called Hitlers GI death camps, in this video they went into detail from a World War II veteran.
He had no problem tell everything that went on in the camp. The documentary style is the
harshest way to show past events, but the difference is that we can now show such events since
that time has passed. Now back during the time it was not good to show all the harsh reality of
what was going on in the POW camps. We look at the prisoner of war genre, we consider
comedy; however, in this time the genre is filled with more documentarys and true storys. The
shows that we see now are of what really happened in the camps. Now people want the true
story about the prisoners in the camps starving and dying in cramped barracks.

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CONCLUSTION/ SO WHAT
In this paper I have brought up the changing of the film industry in the past fifty years
especially during war time. We have explored the creation of the prisoner of war genre in WWII.
The main purpose of this paper was to show how the time period plays a big role on what can
and will be shown over TV or movies. In this paper so far I have brought up crucial points of
film during the time of World War II. Some of these topics include the way that war films were
detailed and especially the prisoner of war camps. I have added many contribution of how in the
22nd century we find out what really happened in these camps. The films like The Great
Escape, Von Ryans Express and, Hogans Heroes were created to lighten the mood and to
ease the public on war. In other words they were a form of propaganda for the allies.
The importance of my contribution is to let the truth come out. Many people of this time
were under the influence that their friends were in good care because they were soldiers. The
truth of it was that they were treated similar to the Jews of the time. Now there was some
sabotage but nothing like in these shows. The films that we made for this time were just to bring
up knowledge of the time but they however did not want the people to be frightened. From my
research I have learned a lot from what the time was all about. I was one of those people that
were in the dark about the POW camps. I love to watch these show and all the crazy actions that
happen in the camp. From the subway of tunnels all the way to the outside connections for the
camp and even the craziest getting dressed in German clothes and walking out of the camp. It is
a very important topic to know and to understand the history. The question that I feel needs to be
answered and could use some more explanation is the ones like how where other films
influenced during other times thru the years. How have films been made since the time of

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WWII, do we follow the same sort of principles for films during other wars such as Vietnam, the
Korean War and other important events thru those years.

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Work cited
Royer, Michelle. "Shaping and Reshaping WWII: French Cinema and the National
Past." Literature & Aesthetics 16, no. 2 (2012).1
Pringle, J. K., P. Doyle, and L. E. Babits. "Multidisciplinary investigations at Stalag Luft III
allied prisonerofwar camp: The site of the 1944 great escape, Zagan, Western
Poland." Geoarchaeology 22, no. 7 (2007): 729-746.3
Author(s): Lenny Rubenstein
Source: Cinaste, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Spring 1979), pp. 16-21
Published by: Cineaste Publishers, Inc
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41685906 .
Accessed: 02/10/2014 21:25
Gruner, Elliott. "What code? Or, no great escapes: The Code of Conduct and other dreams of
resistance." Armed Forces & Society 19, no. 4 (1993): 599-609.1
Cull, Nicholas J. "Great Escapes: ?Englishness? And The Prisoner Of War Genre." Film History:
An International Journal 14 (2002): 282-95. Accessed October 6, 2014.
http://www.jstor.org.librarylink.uncc.edu/stable/3815433.
Russo, Nicholas. "Hogans Heroes Observations, UNCC Cameron building, 2014
Chancellor, Henry. "Month of Escapes." In Colditz: The Untold Story of World War II's Great
Escapes, 169-189. New York: W. Morrow, 2001.3
Chancellor, Henry. "The Stage Is Set." In Colditz: The Untold Story of World War II's Great
Escapes, 75-90. New York: W. Morrow, 2001.3
(Chancellor, 2001)