Vietnam War films, War Film defined (i). A war film is any film dealing with war, usually focusing on naval, air, or land battle, but sometimes focusing instead on prisoners of war, covert operations, training, or other related subjects. Therefore, coming up with a generic definition of the war film presents problems. Sometimes movies are labeled "war films" even when they are not set in combat. Since You Went Away (1944), the story of the American home front in 1944, is not about fighting battles with weapons but fighting the daily battle of morale for those whose lives were indirectly affected. Similarly, The Best Years of Our Lives is about the return to civilian life of three soldiers from different economic backgrounds and the difficult adjustments they must make. Yet the basis of the story is the combat stress they experienced and the impact it had on them mentally and physically. Coming Home (1978), set largely outside of combat, is nevertheless a movie about the Vietnam War. War can also be presented as a metaphor (War of the Buttons, 1994, in which children's playtime quarrels escalate) or as a computerised challenge War Games, 1983. To define the war film, it is thus necessary to establish parameters, the first of which is to separate fact (documentaries and newsreels) from fiction (created stories, even if based on fact), and to determine how much fighting must appear on screen to constitute designating a war film. Some movies have war as a significant background but do not depict any combat. Some have combat sequences as an episode in the larger story, like Gone with the Wind, which begins in the peaceful Old South, moves forward into and through the Civil War, and goes on to the Reconstruction period and postwar problems. For this reason, Gone with the Wind, a major film about the Civil War, is seldom labeled simply as a war film. The war film as a genre is best defined as a movie in which a fictionalised or fact-based story is told about an actual historical war. Fighting that war, planning it, and undergoing combat within it should fill the major portion of the running time. This would include biographies of combatants, such as the World War II hero Audie Murphy (1924–1971) (To Hell and Back, 1955), and movies set inside combat but which remove their characters from the conflict through visualised flashbacks (Beach Red, 1967). This definition eliminates the home setting, the war as background or single episode movie, the military camp film, the training camp movie, and the biography that does not contain actual combat. Dear Egyptian Mail readers, Your comments and/or contributions are welcome. We promise to publish whatever is deemed publishable at the end of each series of [email protected]
