The Campus Theatre During World War II

Trends in Genre

Defining a Genre
A separate obstacle that arose in the cataloging of these films is that the ‘genre’ category became an almost entirely arbitrary way of categorizing these works. As one integral facet of this research deals with the number of war films that were produced and distributed by film studios and subsequently exhibited by movie houses, the question of what exactly constitutes a 'war' film emerged and needed to be addressed. Filmmaker Samuel Fuller has been noted as saying that, “a war film's objective, no matter how personal or emotional, is to make the viewer feel war." Though this definition is succinct, it is still too subjective to base any sort of empirical evidence on.

As as a result, the criteria by which a film can be classified as a war film in the context of this research are:
  1. Depictions of a wartime battle (whether it be naval, air or on land) with combat scenes that are essential to the unfolding of the narrative (i.e. The Story of G.I. Joe)
  2. Depictions of the home front as civilians attempt to cope with the altered realities created by the country's involvement in the war effort (i.e. Swing Shift Maisie​).
  3. Depictions of the return and reintegration of soldiers into society having come back from active duty (i.e. The Roaring Twenties).
Another issue (though admittedly, more minor) was how to categorize films that fit into multiple genres. For example, The Great Dictator by Charlie Chaplin meets the criteria to be defined as a war film but it is undoubtedly a comedy film. In instances such as these, the shared label of "war, comedy" was applied.

War & Comedy

 

This graphic shows the intersection of programming and major events happening during world war two. The notches on the visual represent films shown while the vertical lines running from top to bottom represent the events. 

In this bar graph we see a comparison of the number of films from each genre that made up the Campus Theatre's programming schedule.