The 1940s
1943 & 1949 | World War II | Second Red Scare
During the 1940s, war and film noir films became immensely popular in Little Rock. War movies spiked in 1943 then dropped in 1949. Film noir’s popularity remained low in 1943 but spiked in 1949. Both genres’ rise and fall in popularity reflected the difference in the country’s wartime and postwar attitudes.
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War &
Film Noir
What Was
Popular?
Historical Events of the 1940s
World War II and the Cold War
World War II started when Nazi Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939, but the United States did not join the fight until the bombing of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941. With the country's sudden entry into the war, President Franklin Roosevelt needed to raise moral and build support for the war effort. So, the federal government turned to the movies to create war movies and spread patriotic propaganda.
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After the end of WWII in September 1945, the United States experienced an economic revitalization, and the national atmosphere became more positive. A few years later though, political tensions began to grow between the United States and the Soviet Union, resulting in the Cold War and Second Red Scare. While the country appeared positive on the surface, the American people became haunted by underlying fears.
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The U.S. government formed an alliance with Hollywood to spread propaganda and boost people’s support of the war effort.
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Genre Trends of the 1940s
Rise of War Films
During WWII, movie attendance remained high with around eighty to ninety million Americans attending every week, roughly two-thirds of the country’s population. Recognizing the marketing power of the movies, the U.S. government formed an alliance with Hollywood to spread propaganda and boost people’s support of the war effort.
In June 1942, President Roosevelt created the Office of War Information (OWI) to inform people about the war and act as the governmental liaison for the press, radio, and motion pictures. The OWI opened its Bureau of Motion Pictures (BMP) in Hollywood to oversee the studios and monitor movie content. The BMP staff reviewed movie scripts and storylines with the broad guiding principle of “Will this picture help win the war?” and determined if they benefited the government’s propaganda.
Although the OWI had no censorship power, all the major studios except for Paramount generally cooperated with the BMP, though relations between the studios and BMP reviewers sometimes became tense. For some movies, the BMP directly changed its content, but for others, the studios themselves tweaked their films without the BMP’s involvement because they felt pressured to just by having the government’s presence in Hollywood. Because of this direct and indirect influence of the BMP, Hollywood created and showed more war movies in 1942 and 1943, causing the sudden increase of war movies in the Little Rock movie data.
BMP Tactics
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In contrast to the World War I films which mainly demonized the enemy, the combat movies of the early 1940s were more subtle and diverse. They made the war story average and applicable to normal everyday people. By using a documentary style, they promoted the idea that everyone’s story could be a war story and that everyone’s actions contributed to the Allied effort. A person did not need to be a hero to support the war effort.
Everyone has a Story
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In “The Government Information Manual for the Motion Picture Industry,” the BMP offered a variety of story suggestions and themes to incorporate in movies to remind moviegoers of their civic duty. Their suggestions included showing people in the movies doing small things to support the war such as buying war bonds, donating blood, and following food rationing. In this way, the movies unified the America people behind a national cause that they could actively and easily participate in.
Easy Participation
The WWII war movies also not only helped to build support for the war effort but also shaped the country’s ideas of patriotism, democracy, and American identity.
These films taught moviegoers about courage, character, cooperation, and camaraderie through the portrayal of average men doing heroic feats. With their accomplishments, the protagonists brought democracy and freedom to the ravaged lands suffering under authoritarian rule. Most importantly, the movies demonstrated that sacrifice and duty to comrades and country were the most important qualities to have.
In contrast, the combat films characterized the Axis powers as repressive totalitarian states in direct conflict with American moral values. Any violent actions they did in the movies further polarized the two world powers by framing the Ally characters as martyrs in a moral warfare for democracy.
By flooding the movie theaters with these types of war films in the early 1940s, the BMP and Hollywood shaped American’s ideas about war, glory, and patriotism.
Shown in Little Rock
Genre Trends of the 1940s
Rise of Film Noir
During the latter half of the 1940s, film noir became incredibly popular in Little Rock and across the nation. On the surface, the United States appeared optimistic; it had become one of the world superpowers after WWII, and its economy had more than recovered from the Great Depression. Even Hollywood reached an all-time high in 1946 with over 4 billion ticket sales and four hundred movies released.
However, this optimism quickly gave way to fear and paranoia. The Soviet Union, America’s ally during WWII, became the new enemy, and the fear of nuclear annihilation and communism permeated the national atmosphere. In addition, returning WWII veterans had a difficult time readjusting to the new civilian life as they dealt with the mental trauma from the war and a loss of identity by not being a part of the military anymore.
After living through the brutality of war and feeling insecure at home, people wanted films that showed a grittier world view and connected more with their bleak outlook on life. Instead of morale raising films that pushed traditional values, film noir grew to be the popular genre of the late 1940s and early 1950s because of its more realistic portrayal of American’s post war anxieties.
Film noir grew to be the popular genre of the late 1940s and early 1950s because of its more realistic portrayal of American’s post war anxieties
Although film noir was born in the late 1930s in response to the Great Depression, it increased in popularity and solidified as a style in the 1940s because of WWII. Since the wartime newsreel footage toughened the American public to violence, film censorship relaxed in the mid-1940s, allowing film noir to show violence without moral consequences.
This freedom allowed film noir to portray the anxieties of the audience members. For example, a core element of film noir was the loss of certainty where characters and situations were not what they appeared to be. The lack of certainty also blurred moral lines, creating a grey morality that reflected the national attitude as people processed the horrific events of WWII and questioned the goodness of human nature.
Even the city became a place of uncertainty. These black and white crime dramas explored the dark side of humanity by setting the plots in urban spaces. No longer portrayed as glamorous centers of enterprise and dreams, cities in film noir were malicious landscapes of dark alleys and hidden knives. Instead, the suburb replaced the city as the safe fashionable place to live as white flight spread across the country. After the Great Depression and WWII flipped the world upside down, people turned to film noir as a way to understand society’s rapid changes and cope with their growing anxiety.
Shown in Little Rock
