Editing War film (section)

=== Made by Western Allies ===
{{further|List of Allied propaganda films of World War II}}

The first popular [[Allies of World War II|Allied]] war films made during the [[World War II|Second World War]] came from [[United Kingdom|Britain]] and combined the functions of [[documentary film|documentary]] and propaganda. Films such as ''[[The Lion Has Wings]]'' and ''[[Target for Tonight]]'' were made under the control of the Films Division of the Ministry of Information. The [[Cinema of the United Kingdom|British film industry]] began to combine documentary techniques with fictional stories in films like [[Noël Coward]] and [[David Lean]]'s ''[[In Which We Serve]]'' (1942)—"the most successful British film of the war years"{{sfn|Murphy|2005|p=64}}—''[[Millions Like Us]]'' (1943), and ''[[The Way Ahead]]'' (1944).<ref name="Swann1989">{{Cite book |last=Swann |first=Paul |title=The British Documentary Film Movement, 1926–1946 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JAV80f4DohgC |year=1989 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-33479-2 |pages=viii, 150–173}}</ref>

[[File:Thirty-seconds-over-tokyo.jpg|thumb|left|[[B-25]]s about to launch from the {{USS|Hornet|CV-8|6}} in ''[[Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo]]'' (1944)]]

In America, documentaries were produced in various ways: General Marshall commissioned the ''[[Why We Fight]]'' propaganda series from Frank Capra; the War Department's Information-Education Division started out making training films for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy; the Army made its own through the U.S. Signal Corps, including [[John Huston]]'s ''[[The Battle of San Pietro]]''.<ref name="Manning2004">{{Cite book |last=Manning |first=Martin J. |title=Historical Dictionary of American Propaganda |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1-JjwDPcOLQC&pg=PA86 |year=2004 |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|isbn=978-0-313-29605-5 |pages=86–87}}</ref> [[Cinema of the United States|Hollywood]] made films with propaganda messages about America's allies, such as ''[[Mrs. Miniver]]'' (1942), which portrayed a British family on the home front;<ref>{{Cite web |title=Mrs. Miniver (1942) |url=https://movies.nytimes.com/movie/33719/Mrs-Miniver/overview |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071023093926/http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/33719/Mrs-Miniver/overview |url-status=dead |archive-date=23 October 2007 |department=Movies & TV Dept. |work=[[The New York Times]] |author=Hal Erickson |author-link=Hal Erickson (author) |date=2007 |access-date=7 March 2015}}</ref> ''[[Edge of Darkness (1943 film)|Edge of Darkness]]'' (1943) showed Norwegian resistance fighters,<ref>{{tcmdb title|id=2891|title=Edge of Darkness}}</ref> and ''[[The North Star (1943 film)|The North Star]]'' (1943) showed the [[Soviet Union]] and its [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Communist Party]].<ref>{{tcmdb title|id=85227|title=The North Star}}</ref> Towards the end of the war popular books provided higher quality and more serious stories for films such as ''[[Guadalcanal Diary (film)|Guadalcanal Diary]]'' (1943),<ref>{{tcmdb title|id=77030|title=Guadalcanal Diary}}</ref> [[Mervyn LeRoy]]'s ''[[Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo]]'' (1944),{{sfn|Orriss|1984|pp=93–100}} and [[John Ford]]'s ''[[They Were Expendable]]'' (1945).<ref>{{tcmdb title|2070|They Were Expendable}}</ref>

[[File:Moscow Strikes Back 24-52 Infantry riding into battle on tanks.jpg|thumb|Screenshot from ''[[Moscow Strikes Back]]'' (1942). [[Snow camouflage]]d Russian ski infantry ride into battle on [[BT-7]] cavalry tanks in the [[Battle of Moscow]]]]

The Soviet Union, too, appreciated the propaganda value of film, to publicise both victories and German atrocities. Ilya Kopalin's documentary ''[[Moscow Strikes Back]]'' ({{langx|ru|Разгром немецких войск под Москвой}}, literally "The rout of the German troops near Moscow"), was made during the [[Battle of Moscow]] between October 1941 and January 1942. It depicted civilians helping to defend the city, the parade in [[Red Square]] and [[Stalin]]'s speech rousing the Russian people to battle, actual fighting, Germans surrendering and dead, and atrocities including murdered children and hanged civilians. It won an Academy Award in 1943 for best documentary.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Moscow Strikes Back |url=https://archive.org/details/MoscowStrikesBack |publisher=[[Artkino Pictures]] |access-date=17 March 2015 |date=1942}}</ref><ref name=NYT1942>{{Cite news|last1=T.S. |title=Movie Review: Moscow Strikes Back (1942) 'Moscow Strikes Back,' Front-Line Camera Men's Story of Russian Attack, Is Seen at the Globe |url=https://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9501E0D7113CE33BBC4F52DFBE668389659EDE |newspaper=The New York Times |access-date=18 March 2015 |date=17 August 1942}}</ref> Newsreel cameras were similarly rushed to [[Stalingrad]] early in 1943 to record "the spectacle which greeted the Russian soldiers"—the starvation of Russian prisoners of war in the Voropovono camp by the [[6th Army (Wehrmacht)|German Sixth Army]], defeated in the [[Battle of Stalingrad]].<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Beevor |first1=Antony |title=Stalingrad |year=1999 |orig-date=1998 |publisher=Penguin |isbn=0-14-024985-0 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/stalingrad00anth/page/350 350–351] |url=https://archive.org/details/stalingrad00anth/page/350 }}</ref>

Feature films made in the west during the war were subject to censorship and were not always<!--qua, hardly ever--> realistic in nature. One of the first to attempt to represent violence, and which was praised at the time for "gritty realism", was [[Tay Garnett]]'s ''[[Bataan (film)|Bataan]]'' (1943). The depiction actually remained stylised. Jeanine Basinger gives as an example the "worst image for stark violence" when a Japanese soldier beheads an American: the victim shows pain and his lips freeze in a scream, yet no blood spurts and his head does not fall off. Basinger points out that while this is physically unrealistic, psychologically it may not have been. The wartime audience was, she points out, well aware of friends and relatives who had been killed or who had come home wounded.<ref name=AHA-Basinger>{{Cite journal |last1=Basinger |first1=Jeanine |title=Translating War: The Combat Film Genre and Saving Private Ryan |journal=Perspectives on History|url=http://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/october-1998/translating-war-the-combat-film-genre-and-saving-private-ryan |date=1998 |publisher=American Historical Association |access-date=7 March 2015 |issue=October 1998}}</ref>