James Chapman, Leicester

The Warfare State. The British army and film propaganda during the Second World War

This paper will discuss the representation of the army in British films of the Second World War. It will examine how the Ministry of Information and the War Office used the cinema to create an image of the British army as modern, professional and 'democratic' and to legitimate the conscription of civilians into the armed forces. It will focus in particular on Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1942/43), which Prime Minister Winston Churchill notoriously attempted to suppress on the grounds that it was "detrimental to the morale of the Army!, and Carol Reed's The Way Ahead (1944), which, I will argue, was conceived as an 'official' response to Blimp and which according to one MOI official was "the only picture which I have seen which gives a true picture of the Army and gets the social values right". These are two of the major British wartime films, but they offer rather different perspectives on the army and in particular of its officer class, from the career officer of Blimp to the promoted-through-the-ranks Territorial Army officer of The Way Ahead.