EYE OF HISTORY The Camera as Witness

Why We Fight: War Comes to America (1942–1945)

Tuesday, November 18, 7 pm
Powell Family Screening Room
Center for Film Studies

Introduction by
Andrew Szegedy-Maszak, Department of Classical Studies, Wesleyan University

This award winning series, created by legendary director Frank Capra, was sponsored by the U.S. Government to help explain its “official war policy.” These films were required viewing for the armed forces and were also widely shown in civilian theaters. Considered classic examples of wartime propaganda, they feature masterful editing, classical music and skillful narration all blended together to hammer home their patriotic message. Capra had seen German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, a Nazi propaganda film that Capra described as a “psychological weapon.” Using clips from this and other Nazi films as well as documentary footage from films of U.S. Federal Programs, such as the Works Progress Administration, Why We Fight was part of a larger effort by the U.S. War Department to bring educational and instructional movies to all soldiers on every battlefront, a move in accordance with the wishes of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who stated that, next to guns, what soldiers needed most was “movies and more movies.” Some of Hollywood's leading figures participated in the creation of Why We Fight, and some of the effects were produced by the Walt Disney Studios. War Comes to America, the last film of the series, features American history from colonial days to the outbreak of the war at Pearl Harbor. It is still considered one the best visual histories of the United States ever made.