Exactly 100 years ago, in an article in Collier’s magazine in 1924, the film director DW Griffith made the following prediction: “In the year 2024 the most important single thing which the cinema will have helped in a large way to accomplish will be that of eliminating from the face of the civilised world all armed conflict.” He added: “Pictures will be the most powerful factor in bringing about this condition. With the use of the universal language of motion pictures the true meaning of brotherhood of man will have been established throughout the Earth.”
Leaving aside the irony that’s Griffith’s 1915 picture The Birth of a Nation, a deeply racist film that led directly to the revival of the Ku Klux Klan may have inspired more violence than any other, Griffith’s prophecy of peace and end to national-scale conflicts has not materialised. The violence in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and elsewhere are all bloody reminders that war is still a fact of life.
Cinema may have thrived during the last hundred years, but its role as peace ambassador needs some improving. Instead, it has been continually used by governments to justify military action: sometimes through allegory, other times through overt propaganda. Russia’s culture ministry is prioritising films that will help the Russian war effort in Ukraine. Last year, Russia released a film called The Witness, a two-hour propaganda project masked as a story about a Belgian violinist in Kyiv on the eve of the invasion. Lenin called cinema “the most important of all the arts” and it still clearly has its place in Putin’s regime.
The cinema’s power to influence the masses was recognised from its earliest days. Even before Griffith’s idealistic plea, film had already been used as a means of promoting national strength and building up public support during times of war. During the first world war, for example, the British government established the Cinematograph Committee with the purpose of boosting the war effort. The first major film it produced was called How Britain Prepared, a documentary showcasing British readiness for war. Its aims were to boost soldiers’ morale and instil fear into the enemy army commands, but there was an undeniable conscription motive as well and was plainly intended to inspire patriotic zeal in the hearts of young, recruitable lads. A newspaper described the scene at the film’s London premiere: “If anything could help enlistments, these films should certainly gladden the heart of the recruiting sergeant.”
In the second world war, Frank Capra made a series of films to explain the rationale of American involvement abroad. The result, Why We Fight - seven films produced between 1942 and 1945 – is perhaps the most famous example of a government enlisting the help of a mainstream film director to defend its war effort. The films were originally intended to be shown exclusively to soldiers, but President Roosevelt felt them important enough to be shown to civilians to boost support. The camera and the screen had become significant weapons in the US’s arsenal.
More recently, the US has relied on popular movies to help bolster army enrolment. When Top Gun opened to audiences in 1986, recruitment across the US military soared by 500%; recruitment tables were even stationed outside several theatres, ready to catch impressionable moviegoers still in a Maverick-haze. Voiceovers and newsreel footage weren’t necessary; Tom Cruise flying upside down was enough to drive thousands to the recruiting desks around the country. The best propaganda needn’t call itself propaganda at all.
But cinema hasn’t just been used by the west; films were a major tool in anti-colonial struggle throughout Africa and South America. Some films focused on the emotional and economic toil colonialism inflicted on a country; others were calls to action. The leading proponents of Third Cinema, the anticapitalist film movement from Latin America, well understood that film had been used by colonial powers to further cement their power. It was only natural that a counterrevolutionary cinema was created in response. Anti-colonial struggle was famously shown in Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 film The Battle of Algiers, depicting violent Algerian resistance to French colonial rule. Violent actions shown in the film were used to develop training manuals by the Blank Panthers and the IRA. For their part, the French government obviously believed in cinema’s potential to inspire violence as well: the film was banned on release.
But some films have openly called for cooperation and peace: arguably the most famous cry for brotherly understanding in cinema comes from Charlie Chaplin at the end of The Great Dictator, released in 1940. Chaplin plays a Jewish barber who is mistaken for Adenoid Hynkel, a manifest parody of Hitler. In the film, the barber gives a public speech dressed as Hynkel, but uses the opportunity to preach for understanding rather than conflict. “Soldiers! Don’t give yourselves to brutes – men who despise you – enslave you – who regiment your lives – tell you what to do – what to think and what to feel! Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men – machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts!”
Chaplin’s speech isn’t a plea for pacifism. Rather, it’s a rallying cry for people to unite against dictatorship. “Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery!” Chaplin cries. “Fight for liberty!” His sentiments are the same as Capra’s in Why We Fight,, and can still bring a tear to a cynical eye when watched today.
Sadly, the world today is a far stretch from the one predicted in 1924. Thousands are still dying in armed conflicts around the globe. And cinema is still being used in the service of oppressors and occupiers. A film will never change a despot’s mind, but it may inspire a country’s people to resist. Would the last hundred years have been more or less violent without the invention of the cinema? It’s impossible to say. What is certain is that we are a long way from armed conflict being eliminated. One hopes we are at least a little closer in another hundred years.
