Cameron, Kenneth M., 1931-. America on film : Hollywood and American history / Kenneth M. Cameron. [0826410332 (hardcover : alk. paper)] New York : Continuum, 1997.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1995.9.H5 C36 1997

In this book Kenneth Cameron goes through the 20^th century, attempting to create an appropriate historical and cultural context for the film produced in each decade.  Of particular interest in the chapter entitlted “1940-49: Good War, New World.”  Cameron claims that despite war, the forties produced a wide variety of films that were difficult to analyze.  Some generalizations he was able to draw were between films made before 1942 and those after 1946.  Particularly, the movies made after 1946 and the end of the war tended to be more forward-looking and socially contemplative.  Cameron sites The Beginning or the End? as a film that confonts the moral issues of the day, particularly the decision to drop the atomic bomb and its implications.  He also praises Pride of the Marines for counterring the prevailing attitude of portraying war as glorious.  Though limited by the Production Code, it attempted to reveal the harsh realities of war, in addition to difficult subject of a returning veteran who suffered an injury that made him blind.

Though The Best Years of Our Lives is never explicitly mentioned in the chapter, one can easily see how it fits into Cameron’s perception of what films were trying to do after the war.  Rather than a nostalgic and glorious rendition of the return of war heroes, it examines the lives of three more or less ordinary men, who in their diverstity represent the socio-economic and age spectrum.  The film concerns itself not with their heroes’ reception, but with the difficulties and harsh realities to adjusting to life at home, accompanied by alcoholism, adultery, ostracism, and alienation.  It is also a socially conscious film, containing cultural critique and commentary in its exploration of questions such, should we have dropped the bomb?, or, did we really fight the good war?  Though patriotic in nature, the film does not shy away from interjecting the varying ideas of Americans regarding the war.