Since both movies deal with war and the emotional struggles of men during war, what do you guys think are the major differences between the two movies and the way they each portray violence and the effect of war on human behavior?
shareThe difference between the two movies as well as the experience of the two wars is great.
World War 1 is a distinctly European war with America coming in very late. It was also fought between very similar enemies. What makes it unique and as is shown very well in the film Regeneration is the effect of this new "industrial" war on sensative, educated minds.
The English officer class was comprised mainly of public school/university men. They were schooled in the classics, "well-bred" sensative, etc. Their reaction to the horror, at times through severe psychological fallout, was to vent their thought into a protest of letters. The great poetry wave that comes out as a bitter, realistic exercise in protest is a classical English reaction, by learned men, expressing hell and the resentment of being sent there, through a classical form. (Remember Blake expressing the questions of God and Man by using poetry not fire and brimstone preaching).
As far as Thin Red Line. The Pacific campaign was a largely, almost exclusively American undertaking against an unconventional enemy on a non-static front. There is a confusion to it and the reaction is seemingly a confused sort of anger (post-Vietnam anti-military sentiment) Men express their fear, anger, confusion through rage as opposed to cycling their experience through the channels they were trained in as was done by the English officer class in world war 1 (comparing their experience to biblical/literary references).
Read Grave's "Goodbye To All That" in comparison to Sledge's "With the Old Breed" for memoirs of the trenches and the jungles. Look at Randall Jarrell's "Death of A Ball Turret Gunner" as compared to "Flanders Fields." Thats a good basis for comparsion between the experience and the reaction.
See also "To End All Wars"
I think also that war-reporting and the public conscience of war was different in WW2. In places like the UK, WW1 had become a sort of "sacred cow", a particular horror, the collective memory of which was passed onto the WW2 generation. I don't think people thought such unspeakable horror and loss could be repeated.
Example - in WW1, my paternal grandfather was a serjeant in the 6th Btn Black Watch, 51st Highland Division. he lived through Western Front battles such as Givenchy, Festubert, Loos, The Somme - High Wood and Beaumont Hamel, Arras, 3rd Ypres, Cambrai and the German assaults of Spring 1918 - he survived all; his brother became a lieutenant in the Warwickshires and battled on in the Western Front and survived, my paternal grandmother's 2 brothers were nco's in the 8th Btn Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, 51st Highland Division and survived the Western Front battles; my maternal grandfather was a piper in the 2/7th Royal Scots (65th Lowland Div) and he survived, my maternal grandmother's brother was an nco in the 8th Btn Black Watch, 9th Scottish Division - he fought at Loos, The Somme incl Longueval etc and was killed during an attack at Roeux, Arras, 3rd May 1917. So, one was killed and the others all lived, despite being in the heat of battle on various occasions. My father, in WW2 (1944-45), was an operative (high-grade coded morse communications) with covert Special Forces - SOE Force 136 in Burma, fighting and trying to outsmart Japanese in some of the most terrible campaign conditions in the World. It was very dangerous work with Japs close by and trying to track them down and capture and torture a horrific possibility for comms ops like himself. Yet asking him about WW1, he stated most definitely that he preferred his war (Japs and Burmese jungle WW2) rather than his father's hell of the trenches of WW1.
I think nowadays that better historical research and also info coming into public domain is beginning to balance things out. WW1, terrible as it is, is not so terrible as we have all accepted through the years. The average soldier was not doomed to die after all, trench-life was typically long periods of discomfort and boredom puncuated by short periods of action, the truth is out about Lloyd George creating manpower shortages which greatly amplified Britain's front-line problems in Spring 1918. Look at my WW1 realations as an example of this. All except one were soldiers in assault divisions. Only one was killed. By the common "sacred cow" perception of "doomed youth" over the years, only one should have survived !
WW2 is usually seen as a "good" war in comparison. Normandy has been glossed over as easy business and Omaha beach was a temporary yet bloody glitch. Yet look at Private Ryan - can anyone say that for the soldiers involved this was not as terrifying as a WW1 battle ? The losses were high for the numbers involved. And how about the British and Canadians trying to capture Caen and its approaches ? It is written off as Monty wasting time and not blasting through an easy opponent. Yet British casualties in that Caen campaign of June/July 1944 exceeded the daily losses at the Somme in 1916 ! The "easy" enemy was found to include Panzer Lehr Div, 501 SS Schwere Panzer Btn, 2nd SS Panzer Div, 9th SS Panzer Div, 10th SS Panzer Div and 12th SS Panzer Div. Not exactly easy. And all this is dwarfed by the losses suffered by the Russians !
The reason I write this post is that I believe too much emphasis is given to the officer war poets of WW1 and their "memory" had over-ridden enthusiasm for war history research into the soldiers' experience for too many years. I used to be a "doomed-youth" believer, but now I want truth, not sentiment. As Lord Flasheart put it "Don't you think I wish this war was over ? The blood, the noise - the endless poety ?"
Let's have balance !
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The impact of WW1 is in the numbers nearly a million dead in UK forces alone.. this is 3 times the number of WW2. To counterbalance your families goodluck entire streets of men died.
I would agree we gloss over the heavy loss battles of WW2. Caen, Cassino 54K,20K) Kohima, El Alamein, North Atlantic, and forget nearly all the battles of the eastern front. How many in the UK or US know about the battle of Kursk.
For every family like yours Lambrettaguy, there were dozens like mine: Gran's 2 brothers dead at Gallipoli and Ypres in 1915, my grandfather's 2 brothers also dead on the Western front 1917/18, although he survived (luckily, or I wouldn't be here). Another great uncle so badly wounded he never worked again and my great grandfather taken prisoner at Cambrai and forced to work in a German punishment camp, shortening his life considerably after the war.
My Gran's neighbour and friend sent five sons to war and only one came back.
Devastating.
Agreed that the Eastern front in WW2 is not given the prominence it should in the West.