Movies
and war: nearly all of us are familiar with the World War II movies Saving Private Ryan, The Dirty Dozen, and Schindler's List, but it was the First
World War that popularized war films.
Released in the fall of 1916, the British documentary The Battle of the Somme was viewed by
over twenty-million people, nearly half of the population of Britain at that
time.* Using actual footage from the
front lines, the silent film's graphic images of war were unlike anything those
on the home front had seen before. The
Dean of Durham Cathedral, Herbert Henson, wrote to The Times, objecting that as an "entertainment it wounds the
heart and violates the very sanctity of bereavement." What
did it mean to sit in a darkened room with others and watch the war in black
and white?
A
War Film by Teresa Hooley
I
saw,
With
a catch of the breath and the heart's uplifting,
Sorrow
and pride,
The
Mons Retreat;
The
'Old Contemptibles' who fought and died,
The
horror and the anguish and the glory.
As
in a dream,
Still
hearing the machine-guns rattle and shells scream,
I
came out into the street.
When
the day was done,
My
little son
Wondered
at bath-time why I kissed him so,
Naked
upon my knee.
How
could he know
The
sudden terror that assaulted me?...
The
body I had borne
Nine
moons beneath my heart,
A
part of me…
If,
someday,
It
should be taken away
To
War. Tortured. Torn.
Slain.
Rotting
in No Man's Land, out in the rain—
My
little son…
Yet
all those men had mothers, every one.
How
should he know
Why
I kissed and kissed and kissed him, crooning his name?
He
thought that I was daft.
He
thought it was a game,
And
laughed, and laughed.
The
poem begins with the simple phrase "I saw" – and then breaks off, as
if the poem's speaker herself must pause to process the moving images she has
just viewed. Sorrow and pride co-mingle
with horror and glory, and she cannot easily reconcile the contradictions that
the film and the war have produced. The
war is presented as entertainment, the "week's great draw," and in cinemas where Charlie Chaplin plays out comic scenes, now it is "The Old
Contemptibles" (the nickname given to the men in the British regular army
who survived the slaughter of 1914) who "fight and die."
As
she exits the cinema, she finds that the real world has also shifted and now appears
dream-like. The young mother tries to
return to normal scenes of domesticity, but haunted by the war film,
even her young son's bath-time is an assault as she is seized by "sudden
terror." Remembering the great
intimacy of carrying her son "Nine moons beneath my heart," she realizes
that he, too, will be renamed "It" if he joins the ranks of soldiers: "If someday,/It should be taken away/To
War."
The
anguish that she has witnessed on the movie screen is now projected onto the
body of her young son as she imagines him in a future war, "Tortured. Torn./Slain./Rotting
in No Man's Land, out in the rain—".
The horrors that mutilate and
destroy the bodies of the soldiers are starkly and simply listed. One-word descriptions of death are punctuated
as full sentences, echoing the emptiness and demonstrating the inadequacy of
words to convey grief and loss.
Her
actions, as she "kissed and kissed and kissed him, crooning his name"
appear as a kind of charm to ward off the imagined horrors of the future, but
the young boy "thought it was a game." In this, the child is linked with the men who
direct and propagandize war, often associating it with sports and games,
selling it as adventure and competition.
The
poem is at its most poignant in its implicit realization that the young mother is powerless to break the chain of violence. For women like the speaker of the poem, the
game is averting another war. Published
in 1927, the poem and its argument lost the game a mere twelve years later when
Hitler's German armies invaded Poland, beginning World War II.
*For
more on the film, see the excellent resources on the BBC's website "Why Was the Battle of the Somme film
bigger than Star Wars"? The film
that inspired Hooley's poem has been debated, as has the date of the poem's composition. "The War Film" was published in
Hooley's 1927 collection Songs of all Seasons,
suggesting that the 1926 film Mons was
the inspiration for the poem. For a
fuller discussion, see the excellent post "A War Film" on The Bioscope.
"Nine moons beneath my heart" - wonderful words
ReplyDeleteHaving watched this film many times , I am so grateful it was made. Recently I saw footage of a forensic lip reader giving voice to parts of the film 100 years on. Very moving.
Wonderful words, indeed. And thanks for referencing the forensic lip reader clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdmAfsm18tA It's very poignant: "Sarge, he needs carrying."
ReplyDeleteThat obvious point - all these men and boys had mothers. Mothers have featured prominently in some of my recent research. Pictured in 1928 a Mother at Vimy with her adult son but mourning a brother and husband. The infinity of anguish that women bore during and after the Gt War is beyond belief.
ReplyDelete"All these men and boys had mothers" -- yes.
ReplyDelete