Popular Films

What themes unite better-known films about the First World War?

In this episode, Jessica, Chris and Angus look at some of the better-known films about the war, covering a fifty-year period from All Quiet on the Western Front(1930) to Gallipoli (1981). Along the way, we discuss body horror, Kirk Douglas’s jaw line, European unity and whether the British have a particular penchant for cross-dressing.

References

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

La Grande Illusion (The Grand Illusion) (1937)

Paths of Glory (1957)

Oh! What a Lovely War (1969)

Gallipoli (1981)

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

The Hayes Code

Battle of the Somme (1916)

The Great War (1964): ‘Making of’ documentary

Casablanca (1942)

Jason Crouthamel, An Intimate History of the Front: Masculinity, Sexuality and German Soldiers in the First World War (2014)

Emma Hanna, Sounds of War: Music and the British Armed Forces During the Great War (2020)

‘Sapper’, Sergeant Michael Cassidy, RE (1916)

‘Allo, ‘Allo (1982-1989)

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

King and Country (1964)

The Long, Long Trail (1961)

Joan Littlewood, Theatre Workshop, Stratford

Deborah Thom, Nice Girls and Rude Girls: Women Workers in World War I (1998)

Sister Kate Luard, Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front (1915)

Carloyn Holbrook, Anzac: The Unauthorised Biography (2014)

Charles Bean, The Anzac Book (1916)

Tron (1982)

Mad Max (1979)

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

1917 (2019)

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Professor of Modern British History at Leeds University. My research interests lie at the intersection of the histories of gender, particularly masculinity, medicine and warfare.

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A historian focusing on the First World War and popular representations of warfare. I received my PhD from the University of Sussex in 2013. My thesis examined relations between British and French soldiers during the First World War.

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A Postgraduate Researcher at Leeds University. My current research explores all the men who appeared before the North Riding Military Appeal Tribunal, 1916-18.