War. War never changes. But its depiction in film does.
The war that is most often shown in movies from the 70s is, of course, Vietnam. There was a massive anti-war campaign by students and other young people for political, moral, and personal reasons. Some posit that the reason for this mobility among them was the implementation of forced conscription for what many saw as another needless, endless war especially after Korea in the 1950s. The cultural zeitgeist in America had strong anti-war sentiments that became engrained in films of the time.
The decade really began with Johnny Got His Gun from 1971, which is a horrifying film. It is about a soldier who steps on a landmine on the last day of World War 1 and becomes a quadriplegic, loses his eyes, mouth, and nose yet remains alive and conscious. He relives his life while on a hospital bed in constant pain, unsure whether or not he is living a dream, begging for death either way. One of the most haunting war films I’ve ever seen, it clearly shares the anti-war sentiments of its time.
By the end of the 70s, after the war was over, films really started to lean into the war-is-hell stuff. 1978 gave us The Deer Hunter, and in 1979 Apocalypse Now was released. Both are visceral and raw depictions of the sheer terror of combat and what it does to people. Characters in these movies are not heroes and they aren’t shown as such, they are victims as much as they are perpetrators.
War films used to not focus on the war as a whole, and mostly just zone in on a specific story of heroism from a small band of soldiers doing their patriotic duty, as any red-blooded American would have. Some examples include The Dirty Dozen (1967), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), and The Green Berets (1968), the war is a backdrop in these films, not the focus. Those days are gone, the innocence of war perished leaving only the decrepit corpse of reality.
Do you think that film is more influenced by popular thought or that popular thought is influenced by cinema? Why or why not? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!