Imperial War Museum celebrates 100 years of war films

Museum marks century of war films by showing reality behind the screen
Study in khaki: James McAvoy in Atonement
Universal Studios
Robert Dex @RobDexES5 April 2016

Costumes, props and scripts from films including Saving Private Ryan, Atonement and Casablanca will form part of a new exhibition at the Imperial War Museum looking at the reality behind the big screen.

Storyboards from the helicopter attack scene in Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam drama Apocalypse Now will go on show alongside a uniform worn by James McAvoy in Atonement. The show also includes costumes from Carve Her Name With Pride, which told the story of French-born secret agent Violette Szabo, who was executed by the Nazis after parachuting back into occupied France in the Second World War.

Real To Reel: A Century Of War Movies coincides with the 100th anniversary of one of the earliest examples, The Battle Of The Somme, a propaganda film made on the Western Front and shown while the war was going on.

It will also examine the events of D-Day, vividly recreated in the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan, and examine the real man behind the myth shown in Lawrence Of Arabia.

Curator Laura Clouting said: “Through an array of objects, Real To Reel: A Century Of War Movies will explore the enduring fascination with war on the big screen: why film-makers have been inspired to make war movies, how these stories are brought to life on screen and their ability to influence our understanding of war.”

The show will also look at the “different kinds of audiences” war films attracted. She said: “Some of them would have been going for that recognition that, ‘This is what it was like for us’. On the other hand, lots of people would say these films purport to be the real thing, but actually it was nothing like that.

“That kind of provocation of going to see a war film and you either see similarities or you see vast differences in memory, either your own or your family’s, is one of the most interesting talking points about the genre.”

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