British War Films, 1939-1945

The cinema was the most popular form of entertainment during the Second World War, when film became a critically important medium for influencing mass opinion. Feature films about the forces, such as “Target for Tonight”, “In Which We Serve” and “The Way Ahead”, shaped in the British people’s perceptions of the conflict. “British War Films, 1939-1945: The Cinema and the Services” relates how, with service participation, these pictures came to be made and how they were received. It is the first book to focus on how the army, navy and air force worked with the film industry, and other government departments, to try to shape what people thought about the struggle, making the films produced an important index of British morale and values at a time of desperate national crisis. It places these efforts in the context of feature films on the forces made before and after the Second World War.

Author Biography

Paul Mackenzie is Professor of History at the University of South Carolina and the author of several books related to the Second World War, including The Home Guard: A Political and Military History.