The International Association for Media and History

This thesis explores the role of film in the promotion of national cohesion and community values (or a ‘people’s war’) on the British home front during the Second World War, and in the immediate post-war years.

I am interested in the range and scope of cinematic projections on these themes, the motivations behind them, and what light public reception of these images can shed on attitudes towards these concepts, and on the nature of British wartime society itself. My research probes into the relationships between the Government, Ministry of Information, film producers, the film products and audiences. It examines the formation and development of ‘people’s war’ related ideas in propaganda and filmic discourse, and the roles that these different groups played in these processes. While propaganda is viewed as the principal agent in shaping the relationship between the Executive (Government) and the people (individuals), evidence is used to demonstrate that propaganda dissemination was far from being a top-down process. It is suggested that images of community and nation were most readily accepted by audiences when they tapped into existing preconceptions of reality. Furthermore, through a process akin to osmosis, ‘people’s war’ images came to be used not only in the confines of direct propaganda, but were also adopted by films with a primarily commercial intent. This was a result both of Government and wider media pressure for displays of patriotism within the film industry, and of the coinciding of propaganda, patriotic and commercial interests within the war economy. As such, the influence of propaganda in film extended beyond those films developed purposefully as propaganda vehicles. If this more grey-scale vision of the nature of wartime film propaganda is accepted, it must also be questioned to what extent visions of a ‘people’s war’ were varied and adapted according to the changing context and conditions in which they were employed. As such, these images were not merely a reflection of changing trends in Government policy, but also of the attitudes, beliefs and politics of those responsible for a particular image, the drive towards gentlemanly patriotism and profits, and the way in which members of the audience chose to read and interpret these images. This is not to say that a core ‘people’s war’ message did not exist, simply that the way in which key ideas associated with a ‘people’s war’ were understood could vary.