Cinema's Military Industrial Complex

The vast and influential American military has been aided and abetted by cinema since the earliest days of the medium. The army, navy, and air force put films to work in myriad ways, enlisting them to entertain, train, and heal soldiers as well as to propagandize, strategize, spy, map, and develop weapons, from rifles to atomic bombs. Presenting new essays based on archival research, Cinema’s Military Industrial Complex addresses the relationship of military cinema to Hollywood, technological innovation, new modes of filmmaking, unique film styles and genres, and the rise of American soft power across the long twentieth century. This rich and timely volume is essential for scholars interested in the military’s use of media and the exercise of influence within and beyond American borders.

Haidee Wasson is Professor of Cinema Studies at Concordia University in Montreal. She is the author of Museum Movies and the coeditor of Inventing Film Studies and Useful Cinema.

Lee Grieveson is Professor of Media History at University College London. He is the author of Policing Cinema and Cinema and the Wealth of Nations and the coeditor of several volumes, including Inventing Film Studies and Empire and Film.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

1. The Military’s Cinema Complex
Lee Grieveson and Haidee Wasson

PART ONE. THE MILITARY’S CINEMA APPARATUS
2. Experimental Viewing Protocols: Film Projection and the American Military
Haidee Wasson
3. Mobilizing the Moving Image: Movie Machines at US Military Bases and Veterans’ Hospitals during World War II
Andrea Kelley
4. Through America’s Eyes: Cinerama and the Cold War
Rebecca Prime
5. An Army of Theaters: Military, Technological, and Industrial Change in US Army Motion-Picture Exhibition
Ross Melnick

PART TWO. STRATEGIES OF VIEWING
6. War in Peace: The American Legion and the Continuing Service of Film
Tom Rice
7. Managing the Trauma of Labor: Military Psychiatric Cinema in World War II
Kaia Scott
8. Th e Cinema Intelligence Apparatus: Gregory Bateson, the Museum of Modern Art Film Library, and the Intelligence Work of Film Studies during World War II
Nathaniel Brennan
9. Epistemology of the Checkpoint: Gillo Pontecorvo’s Battle of Algiers and the Doctrine of Counterinsurgency
Vinzenz Hediger

PART THREE. MILITARY-MADE MOVIES
10. Between the Front Lines: Military Training Films, Machine Guns, and the Great War
Florian Hoof
11. From Wartime Instruction to Superpower Cinema: Maintaining the Military-Industrial Documentary
Noah Tsika
12. Framing the Bomb in the West: Th e View from Lookout Mountain
Susan Courtney
13. Occupation, Diplomacy, and the Moving Image: The US Army as Cultural Interlocutor in Korea, 1945–1948
Sueyoung Park-Primiano
14. Shots Made around the World: DASPO’s Documentation of the Vietnam War
James Paasche

PART FOUR. THE MILITARY AND ITS COLLABORATORS
15. War, Media, and the Security of State and Capital
Lee Grieveson
16. Star Testimonies: World War and the Cultural Politics of Authority
Sue Collins
17. “A Treacherous Tightrope”: The Office of War Information, Psychological Warfare, and Film Distribution in Liberated Europe
Alice Lovejoy
18. “A Campaign of Truth”: Marshall Plan Films in Greece
Katerina Loukopoulou

Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index