Filmowe obrazy I wojny światowej: zmienne losy decorum
Film Images of World War I: the Vicissitudes of Decorum

Summary/Abstract: The First World War, in addition to producing an extraordinary boom in technology, also saw a proliferation in film production. New media, which had existed for less than two decades when the war broke out, were generally regarded as vulgar forms of entertainment. The war years radically changed the assessment of film, which in many countries was elevated to the status of a national art, able to rouse the population to battle and reveal the “true face” of the enemy. The First World War was unquestionably a period during which cinema rose to supremacy. Its dominant position among the other arts led both policy-makers and film producers to realise that the specificity of the new medium was its ability to create, not just record reality, and that the “truth of time” and “the truth of the screen” were two distinct things that were often impossible to reconcile. In the decades following the war, a canonised cinematic discourse arose that continues to influence the aesthetics and ethics of storytelling about war. Around 1930, the means used to construct film narratives took the shape that today in a virtually unchanged form is still considered de rigueur, and is transferred from one armed conflict to another. To understand contemporary film visions of conflicts, threats and dehumanization, it is necessary to reach back to the films produced during and after the war.

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