MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

There can be little doubt that World War II is the war that is most represented in American popular film. There are literally hundreds of films in numerous genres set during the war, among them some of the most famous ever made, from Casablanca (1942) and Bataan (1943) to Schindler’s List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). Almost uniformly in these films, American soldiers are shown as noble defenders of freedom genuine heroes who will sacrifice themselves if necessary to stop the Axis from ruling the world.

A sizable body of American films exists, however, which shows private citizens, many of them natives of occupied nations, fighting unconventional wars against the Axis. A central element of many of these “guerrilla films,” however, is the overt “Americanization” of these other nations’ guerrilla struggles. In these films, directors use casting and performance to align resisting peoples with American ideas, traits, and values, erasing interpolating the foreign “other” into a more cinematically “American” identity.

Through examining World War II-era films like Hangmen Also Die! (1943), Edge of Darkness (1943), The Moon is Down (1943), and Days of Glory (1944), this paper illustrates the mechanics by which filmmakers narratively and formally frame non-American “resistance” or guerrilla heroes—characters who are ostensibly Czech, Norwegian, or Russian—as “Americanized.” In these productions for example, a Russian peasant, may have the mannerisms of a typical American teenager; a Norwegian militia member could look and sound as if he lives in Bayside Queens, and a Czech resistance cell member could recall the look and affect of a Chicago gangster. In these films, Americans, insulated from the conflict by two oceans, can see themselves acting courageously in defense of home and hearth, not Czechs, Norwegians, or Russians, subtly but forcefully reaffirming their place at the center of the global struggle against tyranny.