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War film is a film genre concerned with warfare, typically about naval, air, or land battles in the twentieth century, with combat scenes central to the drama.〔 The fateful nature of battle scenes means that war films often end with them. Themes explored include combat, survival and escape, sacrifice, the futility and inhumanity of battle, the effects of war on society, and the moral and human issues raised by war. War films are often categorized by their milieu, such as the Korean War; the most popular subject is the Second World War. The stories told may be fiction, historical drama, or biographical. Critics have noted similarities between the Western and the war film. Nations such as China, Indonesia, Russia and Japan have their own traditions of war film, centred on their own revolutionary wars but taking varied forms, from action and historical drama to wartime romance. Subgenres, not necessarily distinct, include anti-war, comedy, animated, propaganda and documentary. There are similarly subgenres of the war film in specific theatres such as the western desert (North Africa) and the Pacific in the Second World War, or films about Vietnam; and films set in specific domains of war, such as the infantry, the air, at sea, in submarines or prisoner of war camps. ==Genre== The war film genre is not necessarily tightly defined: the American Film Institute, for example, speaks of "films to grapple with the Great War" without attempting to classify these.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.afi.com/silver/films/2014/p67/thegreatwar.aspx )〕 However, some directors and critics have offered at least tentative definitions. The director Sam Fuller defined the genre by saying that "a war film’s objective, no matter how personal or emotional, is to make a viewer feel war." John Belton identified four narrative elements of the war film within the context of Hollywood production: a) the suspension of civilian morality during times of war, b) primacy of collective goals over individual motivations, c) rivalry between men in predominantly male groups as well as marginalization and objectification of women, and d) depiction of the reintegration of veterans. The film critic Stephen Neale suggests that the genre is for the most part well defined and uncontentious, since war films are simply those about war being waged in the 20th century, with combat scenes central to the drama. However, Neale notes, films set in the American Civil War or the American Indian Wars of the 19th century were called war films in the time before the First World War. The critic Julian Smith argues, on the contrary, that the war film lacks the formal boundaries of a genre like the Western, but that in practice, "successful and influential" war films are about modern wars, in particular World War II, with the combination of mobile forces and mass killing. The film scholar Kathryn Kane〔Kane, 1982.〕 points out some similarities between the war film genre and the Western. Both genres use opposing concepts like war and peace, civilization and savagery. War films usually frame World War II as a conflict between good and evil as represented by the Allied forces and Nazi Germany whereas the Western portrays the conflict between "civilized" settlers and the "savage" indigenous peoples.〔Kane, Kathryn. "The World War II Combat Film". In: Wes D. Gehring (ed.) ''Handbook of American Film Genres''. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988, pp. 90-91, ISBN 978-0-313-24715-6.〕 James Clarke notes the similarity between a Western like Sam Peckinpah's ''The Wild Bunch'' and "war-movie escapades" like ''The Dirty Dozen''. Film historian Jeanine Basinger states that she began with a preconception of what the war film genre would be, namely that Further, Basinger considers ''Bataan'' to provide a definition-by-example of "the World War II combat film", in which a diverse and apparently unsuited group of "hastily assembled volunteers" hold off a much larger group of the enemy through their "bravery and tenacity". She argues that the combat film is not a subgenre but the only genuine kind of war film. Since she notes that there were in fact only five true combat films made during the Second World War, in her view these few films, central to the genre, are outweighed by the many other films that lie on the margins of being war films. However, other critics such as Russell Earl Shain propose a far broader definition of war film, to include films that deal "with the roles of civilians, espionage agents, and soldiers in any of the aspects of war (i.e. preparation, cause, prevention, conduct, daily life, and consequences or aftermath.)" Neale points out that genres overlap, with combat scenes for different purposes in other types of film, and suggests that war films are characterised by combat which "determines the fate of the principal characters". This in turn pushes combat scenes to the climactic ends of war films. Not all critics agree, either, that war films must be about 20th century wars. James Clarke includes Edward Zwick's Oscar-winning ''Glory'' (1990) among the war films he discusses in detail; it is set in the American Civil War, and he lists six other films about that war which he considers "notable". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「War film」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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