Editing War film (section)

=== Anti-war ===
{{further|List of anti-war films}}
[[File:All Quiet on the Western Front (1930 film) poster.jpg|thumb|upright=0.65|Anti-war: [[Lewis Milestone]]'s  ''[[All Quiet on the Western Front (1930 film)|All Quiet on the Western Front]]'', 1930]]

The anti-war genre began with films about the First World War. Films in the genre are typically revisionist, reflecting on past events and often generically blended. [[Lewis Milestone]]'s ''[[All Quiet on the Western Front (1930 film)|All Quiet on the Western Front]]'' (1930) was unquestionably powerful, and an early anti-war film, portraying a German point of view; it was the first film (in any genre) to win two Oscars, best picture and best director.<ref name=BFI-Thrift /> Andrew Kelly, analysing ''All Quiet on the Western Front'', defined the genre as showing: the brutality of war; the amount of human suffering; the betrayal of men's trust by incompetent officers. War and anti-war films often prove difficult to categorize as they contain many generic ambiguities.{{sfn|Neale|2000|p=117}} While many anti-war films criticize war directly through depictions of grisly combat in past wars, some films such as Penn's ''[[Alice's Restaurant (film)|Alice's Restaurant]]'' criticized war obliquely by poking fun at such things as the draft board.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Paris |first=Michael |title=The American Film Industry & Vietnam |url=http://www.historytoday.com/michael-paris/american-film-industry-vietnam |journal=History Today |volume=37 |issue=4 |date=4 April 1987}}</ref> The number of anti-war films produced in America dipped sharply during the 1950s because of [[McCarthyism]] and the [[Hollywood blacklist]].<ref>{{Cite book |title=Film Criticism, the Cold War, and the Blacklist |jstor=10.1525/j.ctt6wqb6x |last=Smith |first=Jeff |publisher=University of California Press |year=2014 |isbn=978-0-520-95851-7 |chapter=Reading the Hollywood Reds }}</ref> The end of the blacklist and the introduction of the MPAA rating system marked a time of resurgence for films of all type including anti-war films in the States. Robert Eberwein names two films as anti-war classics.{{sfn|Eberwein|2005|p=4}} The first is [[Jean Renoir]]'s  prisoner of war masterpiece<ref name=BFI-Thrift /> ''[[Grand Illusion (film)|La Grande Illusion]]'' (''The Grand Illusion'', 1937). Renoir's critique of contemporary politics and ideology celebrates the universal humanity that transcends national and racial boundaries and radical nationalism, suggesting that mankind's common experiences should prevail above political division, and its extension: war.<ref>Stephen Pendo, ''Aviation in the Cinema'' (1985) p. 107.</ref> The second is [[Stanley Kubrick]]'s ''[[Paths of Glory]]'' (1957). The critic [[David Ehrenstein]] writes that ''Paths of Glory'' established Kubrick as the "leading commercial filmmaker of his generation" and a world-class talent. Ehrenstein describes the film as an "outwardly cool/inwardly passionate protest drama about a disastrous French army maneuver and the court-martial held in its wake", contrasting it with the "classic" ''All Quiet on the Western Front'''s story of an innocent "unstrung by the horrors of war".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Ehrenstein |first=David |title=Paths of Glory |url=http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/812-paths-of-glory |publisher=The Criterion Collection |date=25 June 1989 |access-date=8 March 2015}}</ref>