The Facts of War: Cinematic Intelligence and the Office of Strategic Services

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Willmetts
Keyword(s):  
Visual Experience ◽  
Significant Contribution ◽  
John Ford ◽  
Hollywood Film ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
Paul Virilio ◽  
Propaganda Films ◽  
Office Of Strategic Services

This chapter tells the story of the OSS Field Photographic Unit (FPU) and its impact on American cinema and society. Led by the legendary Hollywood film director John Ford, the FPU produced training, reconnaissance and propaganda films for the CIA’s wartime predecessor. In doing so, it is argued here, they made a significant contribution to what theorist Paul Virilio termed “the logistics of perception”, or the ways and means by which war is perceived. By helping to transform the second-hand experience of war from a predominantly textual to a mostly visual experience, the FPU left a profound legacy.

scholarly journals The “Scholastic” Marine Who Won a Secret War: FRANK HOLCOMB, THE OSS, AND AMERICAN DOUBLE-CROSS OPERATIONS IN EUROPE

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-30
Author(s):  
Nicholas Reynolds
Keyword(s):  
Significant Contribution ◽  
Marine Reserve ◽  
Marine Corps ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Unpublished Studies ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Office Of Strategic Services ◽  
Stay Behind ◽  
Secret War ◽  
Double Cross

This article focuses on a little-known contribution to Allied victory in Europe after D-Day by a part of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the Special Counterintelligence (SCI) teams of the X-2 (Counterintelligence) Branch. Using a combination of private papers, unpublished studies, and OSS records, the author looks through the eyes of the commander of the SCI teams, Frank P. Holcomb, son of wartime Commandant General Thomas Holcomb. A Marine Corps reservist and OSS officer, Holcomb received a rudimentary orientation from the British in counterespionage and deception operations before creating his own highly successful units to perform those missions. In short order, the OSS went from having almost no such capability to neutralizing every German stay-behind agent in France and Belgium and turning a number of them back against the enemy to feed the Third Reich deceptive reports, accepted as genuine, thereby making a significant contribution to the security of the Allied armies. This article offers examples of OSS successes as testament to the skill and fortitude of a Marine Reserve officer serving on independent duty.

The 'War on Terror' and American Film

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terence McSweeney
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Cultural Trauma ◽  
American Film ◽  
War Films ◽  
Hollywood Film ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
Historical Dramas ◽  
Alien Invasion ◽  
The Impact

American film in the first decade of the 21st century became a cultural battleground on which a war of representation was waged, but did these films endorse the 'War on Terror' or challenge it? More than just reproducing these fears and fantasies, The 'War on Terror' and American Film argues that American cinema has played a significant role in shaping them, restructuring how audiences have viewed this most tumultuous of decades in particularly influential ways. This compelling and theoretically informed exploration of contemporary American cinema charts the evolution of the impact of 9/11 on Hollywood film through a range of genres-war films, superhero movies, historical dramas, horror and even alien invasion films - each revealing a cinema not of escapism but one that engages profoundly with the turbulent era in which their films were made. Through a vibrant analysis of films as diverse as War of the Worlds (2005), United 93 (2006), 300 (2007), The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), Zero Dark Thirty (2012), Marvel Avengers Assemble (2012) and many others, The 'War on Terror' and American Film explores the influence of the cultural trauma of 9/11 and the subsequent 'War on Terror' on American cinema in the first decade of the new millennium and beyond.

Jewish Coding: Cultural Studies and Jewish American Cinema

Jewishness ◽  
2008 ◽  
pp. 291-310
Author(s):  
Mikel J. Koven
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Literal Meaning ◽  
American Film ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
Popular Cinema ◽  
Hollywood Film ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
Esoteric Knowledge ◽  
Schindler's List

This chapter assesses the Jewishness of Hollywood film. It explores how Jewishness is encoded within specific key Jewish American films — films which, while made by Jewish American film-makers, are accessible to and indeed intended for a mainstream, and therefore not necessarily a Jewish, audience. The emphasis on the ‘ness’ in ‘Jewishness’ moves the humanistic analysis of popular cinema from what the director intended to the way that different audiences interpret the production. It is a way to get at Jewish meanings which may be different from literal meaning, which tends to be defined by mainstream or Christian standards. Coding is here recognized as a kind of cultural bilingualism wherein, while the films are on the surface fully comprehensible to all potential audience members, Jewish and non-Jewish, certain discourses will be directed to and more immediately understood by those who have esoteric knowledge of Jewish American culture. Through a consideration of various types of cinematic encodedness — of language, of customs, and of music — the chapter investigates the emergent Jewishness of these films, which include Exodus (1960), Schindler's List (1993), and Fiddler on the Roof (1971).

Hollywood Aesthetic

Projections ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 48-55
Author(s):  
Todd Berliner
Keyword(s):  
Film History ◽  
Intrinsic Properties ◽  
Aesthetic Design ◽  
Aesthetic Experiences ◽  
Hollywood Film ◽  
Hollywood Cinema ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
Affective Processes ◽  
Aesthetic Pleasure ◽  
Hollywood Movies

Hollywood Aesthetic: Pleasure in American Cinema investigates the Hollywood film industry’s chief artistic accomplishment: providing aesthetic pleasure to mass audiences. Grounded in film history and supported by research in psychology and philosophical aesthetics, the book explains (1) the intrinsic properties characteristic of Hollywood cinema that induce aesthetic pleasure; (2) the cognitive and affective processes, sparked by Hollywood movies, that become engaged during aesthetic pleasure; and (3) the exhilarated aesthetic experiences afforded by an array of persistently entertaining Hollywood movies. Hollywood Aesthetic addresses four fundamental components of Hollywood’s aesthetic design—narrative, style, ideology, and genre—aiming for a comprehensive appraisal of Hollywood cinema’s capacity to excite aesthetic pleasure. This article outlines the book’s main points and themes. As a précis, it is heavy on ideas and light on evidence, which is to be found in the book itself.

scholarly journals Quiet Americans: The CIA and Early Cold War Hollywood Cinema

2012 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
SIMON WILLMETTS
Keyword(s):  
Film Industry ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
Covert Action ◽  
Hollywood Film ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
Production Code ◽  
The Press ◽  
Us Government

This article examines the relationship between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Hollywood film industry from 1947 to 1959. Surprisingly, the CIA was almost entirely absent from American cinema screens during this period, and their public profile in other popular media, including television and the press, was virtually nonexistent. This conspicuous lacuna of publicity coincided with what some scholars have termed the “Golden Age” of US covert action – an era of increasing CIA intervention in Italy, Iran and Guatemala, to name only the most prominent examples. How was it that the CIA managed to maintain such a low public profile and in the process evade popular scrutiny and questions of accountability during such an active period of its history? Utilizing extensive archival research in film production files and the records of the CIA themselves, this article suggests that Hollywood filmmakers adhered to the CIA's policy of blanket secrecy for three interrelated reasons. First, it suggests that the predominance of the so-called “semidocumentary” approach to the cinematic representation of US intelligence agencies during this period encouraged filmmakers to seek government endorsement and liaison in order to establish the authenticity of their portrayals. Thus the CIA's refusal to cooperate with Hollywood during this period thwarted a number of attempts by filmmakers to bring an authentic semidocumentary vision of their activities to the silver screen. Second, up until the liberalization of American defamation law in the mid-1960s, Hollywood studio legal departments advised producers to avoid unendorsed representations of US government departments and officials through fear of legal reprisal. Finally, this article suggests that the film-industry censor – the Production Code Administration – was instrumental in reinforcing Hollywood's reliance upon government endorsement and cooperation. This latter point is exemplified by Joseph Mankiewicz's controversial adaptation of Graham Greene's The Quiet American. Overturning existing scholarship, which argues that CIA officer Edward Lansdale played a decisive role in transforming the screenplay of Greene's novel, this article suggests that Mankiewicz's alterations were made primarily to appease the Production Code Administration.

D.W. Griffith

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Merritt
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
World War ◽  
John Ford ◽  
Story Line ◽  
Hollywood Film ◽  
Battle Of The Sexes ◽  
Mise En Scene ◽  
Action Sequences ◽  
Film Stars ◽  
Happy Valley

David Wark Griffith (b. 1875–d. 1948) continues to generate a broad range of critical reaction. Although acknowledged as America’s seminal director of narrative film (and certainly the most influential), he is also perceived as being among the most limited. Praise for his mastery of film technique is matched by repeated indictments of his moral, artistic, and intellectual inadequacies. At one extreme he is hailed as a modernist who, especially in his early films, redefined melodrama and the way we perceive time and space; at the other he is attacked for his fervid moralizing and vulgarity. As one critic says of him, “He was an explorer, and he was lost.” Griffith became a famous filmmaker before anyone knew his name. As the anonymous director for the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company (later called the Biograph Company), he made over 450 one- and two-reelers in five years and won both critical and popular acclaim. Griffith was best known for pioneering and refining the mechanics of film form, especially those related to editing, mise-en-scène, and camera composition. His Biographs also became the original showcase for actors like Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, and other Hollywood film stars. He reached the peak of his popularity and influence in features. Between 1915 and 1920, he released The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, Broken Blossoms, and Way Down East. He also directed Hearts of the World, a World War I propaganda epic, alone among his early spectacles ignored today. But in 1918 it was the country’s most popular war film, and it rivaled The Birth of a Nation and Way Down East as the most profitable of all Griffith’s features. Griffith also made a much different sort of movie—the pastoral romance. Made on small budgets, Griffith’s pastorals have also received serious critical attention, especially among modern critics. Set in rural towns, Romance of Happy Valley, True Heart Susie, and The Greatest Question are notable for a near-absence of action sequences and overt physical struggles. The main figures (played by Lillian Gish and Bobby Harron) appeared to emerge independent of story line. Even his final rural drama, The White Rose, made with Mae Marsh and set in the Louisiana bayous, has attracted latter-day admirers. He lost his audiences in the mid-1920s and never regained them, although several of his late films—especially “Isn’t Life Wonderful?”Battle of the Sexes, and The Struggle—have been used to argue against the conventional notion of Griffith’s “decline.” Filmmakers ranging from Eisenstein and Abel Gance to Renoir, John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, and Akira Kurosawa have acknowledged their debt to Griffith, but characteristic of his topsy-turvy reputation, in 1999 the Directors Guild of America removed Griffith’s name from their D. W. Griffith Award for fear of offending recipients.

Stabilizing pyritic material

1989 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 244-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald L. Wolberg
Keyword(s):  
Significant Contribution ◽  
Organic Materials ◽  
Sedimentary Rocks ◽  
Iron Sulfides ◽  
Decomposition Products ◽  
Iron Minerals ◽  
Pyrite Formation ◽  
Organic Sediments ◽  
Freshwater Environments

The minerals pyrite and marcasite (broadly termed pyritic minerals) are iron sulfides that are common if not ubiquitous in sedimentary rocks, especially in association with organic materials (Berner, 1970). In most marine sedimentary associations, pyrite and marcasite are associated with organic sediments rich in dissolved sulfate and iron minerals. Because of the rapid consumption of sulfate in freshwater environments, however, pyrite formation is more restricted in nonmarine sediments (Berner, 1983). The origin of the sulfur in nonmarine environments must lie within pre-existing rocks or volcanic detritus; a relatively small, but significant contribution may derive from plant and animal decomposition products.

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