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Chapter 6
The 1940s: Hollywood Goes to War
The purpose of this chapter is to explore political films of the 1940s especially as they
demonstrate the industry’s response to the outbreak of WWII abroad and to America’s
eventual decision to enter. During the war many films played the part of pro-war
propaganda and few took the opportunity to address social issues related to prosecution
of the war. After the war, however, Hollywood made some of its strongest social issue
films as well as powerful movies about the political process. Regulators of the
Production Code Administration (PCA), the breakup of the big studios, and paranoia
about Communism eventually discouraged the making of such films.
Objectives for Chapter 6:
1. Trace Hollywood’s turn to addressing international, vs. domestic, concerns.
2. Describe how Hollywood championed America’s entrance into WWII.
3. List the concrete ways Hollywood contributed to the war effort beyond production
of pro-war films.
4. Distinguish the trends in anti-fascist and anti-Nazi films from pro-war, spy, and
internationally themed films.
5. Trace different public reactions to these overtly political films, from support to
ambivalence to hostile rejection.
6. Describe and analyze the landmark film, Citizen Kane (1942).
7. Reveal presidential-level involvement in films like Mission to Moscow made to keep
Stalin in the war.
8. List racist tendencies in pro-war films’ vilification of the enemy.
9. Explain how Congress negatively viewed Hollywood’s political filmmaking, accusing
it of encouraging war, promoting Roosevelt, or leaning to the left but never to the
right.
10. Explain how various film genres—musicals, film noir, and the social problem film—
seemed to reflect post-war feelings about the nation’s fate, from economic optimism
to fears of Communism.
Discussion Questions for Chapter 6:
1. What was Hollywood’s reaction by and large to international unrest leading to
WWII and then to the onset of war and America’s entry into it?
2. What was the press reaction to Citizen Kane and why?
3. What happened to the Hollywood audience after the war both as measured by film
attendance and as related to broader social change and unrest?
4. Why were antifascist films considered controversial in the democratic United
States?
5. What does the fact that films did not enjoy First Amendment protection have to do
with the extent to which WWII-era films collaborated with or resisted Nazi
Germany?
Assignments for Chapter 6:
1. Research pro-war propaganda posters sponsored by the government and movie
posters of the same period: what similarities do you notice? What values and fears do
both kinds of visual art express?
2. Write an essay arguing how Welles uses cinematic grammar to suggest Kane’s power,
corruption, and vulnerabilities.
3. Research the documentaries Frank Capra directed for the U.S. war effort: how does
that work resonate with his fiction films from the war and immediate postwar
period?
4. Write an essay on the depiction of returning veterans and government and societal
treatment of them in postwar films like The Best Years of Our Lives. Is the returning
veteran a “problem,” a hero, both? What kinds of solutions are offered?
