This book recounts the reception of selected films about the Great War released between 1918 and 1938 in the USA and Great Britain. It discusses the role that popular cinema played in forming and reflecting public opinion about the War and its political and cultural aftermath in both countries. Although the centenary has produced a wide number of studies on the memorialisation of the Great War in Britain and to a lesser degree the USA, none of them focused on audience reception in relation to the Anglo-American 'circulatory system' of Trans-Atlantic culture.
1. Introduction: Historical Reception Studies and the Circulatory System.- 2.
The Heart of Humanity and
The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse: The Just War.- 3. Laurence Stallings and the Veteran-Author.- 4. James Whale: 'A Britisher Who Thinks, Cinematically, Like an American'.- 5. The Aftermath of
All Quiet on the Western Front.- 6. Things to Come.- 7. The Universal Brotherhood.
Ryan Copping teaches film studies courses in the Dept. of Visual and Media Arts at Grand Valley State University near Grand Rapids, Michigan. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom.
