Understated Stoicism - Thoughts on The Classic British War Movie

Apparently, British war movies were never popular in the US.  Not just because they were a reminder to Americans that they hadn't won World War Two single handed, not to mention the fact that the war had actually started in 1939, not at the end of 1941.  No, I suspect that the main reason that they couldn't find an audience in the US is because, in the main, British war films are about stoicism, about the fact that there are some things you have to endure.  Which is hardly surprising as, for most of the UK's population, that was their experience of war - it wasn't something happening 'over there', far away from their homes, but rather it was happening 'right here', with the home front as the front line.  During the Battle of Britain, the 'Thin Blue Line' of RAF Fighter Command might have been performing heroics in the skies, defending the UK from the Luftwaffe, but for people on the ground, the rain of bombs that destroyed homes, lives, families, whole communities, was something they had to endure as best they could.  Moreover, even after the RAF had established control of the skies over Britain, they still had to endure the night bombing of the Blitz then, later in the war, the rain of first V1s, which could be defended against, then V2s, which couldn't be defended against.  It's also important to remember that Britain kicked off the war with a series of set-backs, from the fall of France and Dunkirk, to the unsuccessful campaign in Norway, culminating with the loss of Crete and defeat in Greece, not to mention the early part of the Desert War, which saw British forces continually on the defensive, pushed back across North Africa.  And that was just the European and Mediterranean fronts.  The blows kept on coming: even at sea, the Royal Navy kept losing major assets like HMS Hood and HMS Prince of Wales. All that Britain could do was to meet these set backs with stoicism and keep faith in the hope of victory in the long-term.

So it shouldn't be surprising that British war films, particularly those made in the immediate aftermath of the war, during the fifties and early sixties, should reflect this.  Even where these films depict British victories - The Battle of the River Plate, the sinking of the Bismarck or the Dambusters raid, for instance - they tend to do so in a low key way, focusing on the people involved and the effects upon their lives and the lives of their wider families and friends.  The most powerful moment in The Dambusters (1954), for instance, isn't the destruction of the dams, but a subsequent scene where the camera pans across the rooms of crew members who didn't come back, clocks still ticking, clothes laid out, pictures and mementoes silently awaiting owners who will never return.  These films are, more often than not, less a celebration of victory than a solemn contemplation of the human costs of those victories.  Even The Battle of Britain (1969), despite its spectacular recreation of the aerial combat, feels essentially downbeat, with pilots coming to understand that, often, simply surviving the battlefield is the best you can hope for and that individual victories in the air can do nothing to guarantee the safety of loved ones on the ground.  For the US, while the war might have started with the shock of Pearl Harbor, for the most part, it subsequently saw the US victorious on all fronts they participated on, while their homeland remained untouched.  Not surprisingly, their war movies reflected this experience, with them being far more action-orientated and upbeat - they didn't stoically endure, they kicked ass.  At least in Hollywood's mythologised version of World War Two they did.  The quiet, stiff upper lip stoicism of British war heroes was eschewed in favour of gung ho, conspicuous heroics.  For a lot of the people who watched US made war movies, World War Two was something that had happened far away and hadn't affected them directly, whereas for British audiences, in the fifties and sixties, it wasn't just traumatic memories of the war that persisted, but also its physical scars in the shape of the very visible damage done to Britain's cities.

Of late, I've watched quite a few British war movies from the fifties and early sixties and been struck by their quiet stoicism.  In truth, when I was a child, I far preferred watching US war movies on TV - there was always a guarantee of some action, of tanks rumbling around and blowing each other up - finding their UK equivalents relatively dull and downbeat.   But as an adult, I can see how clearly they encapsulate an enduring and defining characteristic of the British - that capacity for simply and quietly enduring everything that is thrown at you and patiently waiting for your time to come.  It was an ethos that I was brough up with and still informs my perspective on life: spectacular heroics are all well and good, but they alone won't win the long game - that requires a quieter, more subtle approach.  What also struck me was just how many British war films involved PoW camps, underlining that, thanks to that difficult start to the war that Britain had to endure, for many who served, being a PoW was their main experience of the war, rather than combat.  Not to forget the number of British war movies that celebrate the efforts of those on the home front and their contributions to victory, or the efforts of the Merchant Navy in keeping supplies flowing to the UK and its allies.  All a far cry from the average Hollywood war movie, which, more often than not, were in essence just action pictures with the war rather than the Old West as a background.  Which isn't to say that there aren't good and thoughtful US made films about World War Two, but just that even these are different to their British equivalents, being informed by a different experience of the same historical event.