Ground-breaking Expressive Strategies in the War Films of Classical Realism

Abstract

Classical Hollywood cinema applied a stylistic formula that would come to shape cinematic realism. This article offers a detailed analysis of the cinematographic and editing techniques that diverged from classical conventions in some of the battle scenes produced between 1942 (after the United States entered the Second World War) and the end of the classical period (around 1970). The study shows how techniques derived from war documentaries and Soviet montage shaped a new kind of cinematic realism. War realism broke away from the classical style to increase the emotional impact on a viewer who had to become emotionally engaged with the protagonists in order to identify with an ideological message. The ground-breaking strategies of some of the most famous battle scenes of classical cinema laid the foundations for what has evolved into the hyperrealism of the contemporary war film or of the action film in general.