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Module Description

Taking films from different European countries with an experience of resistance, this course will consider representations of resistance to invasion and occupation during the Second World War. By considering films from countries which experienced occupation directly as well as those which did not, the course will reflect on the way resistance has been represented on film and the way in which the representations engage directly or indirectly with on-going debates surrounding memory and memorialisation. The extent to which film engages with debates taking place outside of the cinema as well as instigating such debates will be explored. In the examples taken from French cinema we will consider the films alongside aspects of the debate regarding the legacy of occupation and collaboration. From our British examples we will consider the way in which the representation of resistance has been used both as a tool of propaganda and as an example of an ‘alternate history’. In other examples we will consider responses to occupation and representations of resistance in the period of political uncertainty which accompanied liberation and the years that followed.

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List of films:

• Went the day well? (Cavalcanti, UK, 1942)
• Roma città aperta (Rossellini, Italy, 1945)
• La Bataille du rail (Clement, France, 1946)
• Le Silence de la Mer (Melville, France, 1949)
• Kanal (Wajda, Poland, 1956)
• It happened here (Brownlow & Mollo, UK, 1966)
• L'Armée des ombres (Melville, France, 1969)
• Monsieur Klein (Losey, France, 1976)

List of films for secondary study:

• Nuit et brouillard (Resnais, France, 1955);
• The Stranger (Welles, USA, 1946)

Initial bibliography (readings will be available via the library catalogue / Moodle):

• Henry Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France Since 1944 (Harvard University Press, 1991). Translated by Arthur Goldhammer;
• Naomi Greene, Landscapes of Loss: The National Past in Postwar French Cinema (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999);
• Marcia Landy, Cinematic Uses of the Past (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1997);
• Nicholas Reeves, The Power of Film Propaganda: Myth or Reality? (London: Continuum, 2003);
• Janina Falkowska, Andrzej Wajda, History, Politics, and Nostalgia in Polish Cinema (London: Berghahn Books, 2008);
• Aaron Kerner, Film and the Holocaust: New Perspectives on Dramas, Documentaries, and Experimental Films (London: Continuum, 2011);
• Helmut Peitsch, Charles Burdett, Claire Gorrara, European Memories of the Second World War (London: Berghahn Books, 2006);
• Jorg Echternkamp, Stefan Martens, Experience And Memory: The Second World War in Europe (London: Berghahn Books, 2010);
• Frank Biess, Robert G. Moeller, Histories of the Aftermath: The Legacies of the Second World War in Europe (London: Berghan Books, 2010)
• Marek Haltof, Polish Film And The Holocaust: Politics and Memory (London: Berghan Books, 2012);
• Toby Haggith, Joanna Newman, Holocaust and the Moving Image: Representations in Film and Television Since 1933 (London: Wallflower Press, 2005);
• Lucy Noakes, Juliette Pattinson, British Cultural Memory and the Second World War (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013).

This module description is accurate at the time of publication. Amendments may be made prior to the start of the academic year.