Film and the Popular Memory of the Second World War in Britain 1950–1959

Abstract

Film can be a powerful interpreter of the past. Whether it fosters nostalgia or adopts a critical stance towards history, it plays an important role as a “vector of memory”.¹ The 1950s saw the release of over eighty films about the Second World War in Britain, thirty of which were listed as top box office successes.² Since the earning power of films indicates their resonance with the public, and since, in the 1950s, cinema was still the most popular form of mass entertainment in spite of declining audiences due to television, these high-earning films can be considered key components in the formation of the popular memory of the war in Britain in the 1950s.³ This essay focuses on what the most successful 1950s war films contributed to the popular memory of the Second World War in Britain between 1950 and 1959. It builds on interpretative readings of the postwar war film by a number of scholars, notably Geoff Eley, Christine Geraghty, Andy Medhurst and Neil Rattigan.⁴ Adapting the question which Sonya Rose poses in relation to the social and cultural history of the war in Which People’s War? it explores whose memory of the war the 1950s films privileged, by examining the influences on their production, the derivation of their stories and their resulting representations of the national war effort.