Addressing a perceived absence of critical attention to changes in the war film brought about by the advent of the digital, this thesis aims to construct an original study of contemporary (post-2001) US war cinema by exploring the shifting relationship between embodiment, subjectivity and digital (military-technological) mediation. In order to update the critical framework necessary for comprehending how the war film is altered by the remediation of digitised military interfaces, I draw on a highly diverse set of approaches ranging from journalistic accounts of the wars in Iraq (2003-11) and Afghanistan (2001-present), studies of military technologies from Paul Virilio to Derek Gregory and Pasi Väliaho, as well as film/media studies work on ethics and spectatorship. The corpus is similarly diverse, encompassing mainstream genre films such as Zero Dark Thirty (2012), documentaries, and gallery installations by Omer Fast and Harun Farocki, thus offering a comprehensive and inclusive portrait of contemporary cinematic trends. The thesis begins by identifying the genre's post-Vietnam turn to embodied, subjective experience and explores the continuation of this tendency through films such as The Hurt Locker (2008) and its complicity with phenomena such as journalistic embedding. Subsequently, I trace how drones and simulations radically alter conventional cinematic constructions of subjective perceptual experience through readings of Omer Fast's Five Thousand Feet is the Best (2011) and Harun Farocki's Serious Games (2009-10), noting in particular the emergence of the virtualised yet embodied 'presence' of the drone operator and the conditioning of trans-subjective, cybernetic networks via CG simulations. Finally, I turn to the remediation of various digital interfaces in films such as Redacted (2007), comparing the emergent models of military subjectivity discussed in the previous chapters with the spectatorial positions evoked by this hypermediated aesthetic.

Yes / This text discusses the films of French director Albert Lamorisse in relation to the poetics of cinema. It focuses on three of Lamorisse’s films, Crin Blanc (1953), Le Ballon Rouge (1956) and Le Vent des Amoureux (1978), in order to examine his fascination with wind, a force of nature, due to its invisibility, that is virtually impossible to capture on film. Certain French theorists, however, have tried to explain the power of the wind, most notably Gaston Bachelard, whose works are quoted here as part of the analysis, while a few distinguished filmmakers, such as Joris Ivens and Andrei Tarkovsky, have used wind in interesting ways. But only Lamorisse had what could be described as a sustained obsession. Despite early success (the great French film theorist André Bazin was praiseworthy about his short films), Lamorisse has been somewhat neglected in recent years. Thus, this essay highlights the unique skills of a ‘forgotten man’ of French post-war cinema.

No description available.

The classically idyllic, carefree world of childhood would appear to be diametrically opposed to the horrors of war and world-wide conflict. However, throughout film history, filmmakers have continually turned to the figure of the child as a prism through which to examine the devastation caused by war. This thesis will investigate the representation of childhood experience of the Second World War across six fiction films: Roberto Rossellini’s Paisan (1946) and Germany Year Zero (1947), René Clément’s Forbidden Games (1952), Andrei Tarkovsky’s Ivan’s Childhood (1962), Jan Nemec’s Diamonds of the Night (1964) and Elem Klimov’s Come and See (1985). Spanning forty years, I will examine how these films, whilst sharing many thematic and formal concerns, are unquestionably diverse. They are products of specific socio-cultural milieux, but are also important works in the evolution of cinematic style in art cinema. The films can be aligned to various trends such as neorealism (Paisan, Germany Year Zero), Modernism (Ivan’s Childhood, Diamonds of the Night) and Neo-expressionism (Come and See). Structured in four parts – on witness, landscape, loss and play – I will suggest that just filmmakers utilise childhood experience – often fragmented and chaotic in terms of temporality - to reflect the chaos of war. The first part of my study focuses on the child as witness, the child as Deleuzian seer. I draw on the writings of Gilles Deleuze as well as post-Deleuzian interventions of Tyrus Miller and Jaimey Fisher to argue that whilst Deleuze’s characterization of the child figure as passive is somewhat problematic when applied to the neorealist works, it can, however, be more rigorously applied to Come and See, a film in which, I suggest, the child embodies a much purer form of the Deleuzian seer. In the second part of my study, drawing on the work of Martin Lefebvre and Sandro Bernardi amongst others, I discuss the representation of landscape and its relation to the figure of the child. The third part will examine the representation of loss as well as the symbolic quality of water and its links to the maternal with reference to psychoanalytic theory and the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore. The fourth and final part also draws on psychoanalysis in examining the role of play in the six films with particular reference to the work of D.W Winnicott and Lenore Terr. My study seeks to contribute to the comparatively under-explored subject of the child in film through close analysis of film aesthetics including mise-en-scène, editing, and film sound.

[pt] Este trabalho tem por objetivo elaborar uma análise inédita sobre a representação do capelão militar, enquanto personagem, nos filmes de guerra hollywoodianos O Resgate do Soldado Ryan e Peal Harbor e no filme autoral A Grande Guerra e Paisà. Para isto, observou-se o percurso histórico do cinema, o seu uso como uma linguagem de comunicação e propaganda, as suas referências teóricas, que corroboram com a construção do personagem no campo religioso e social. A pesquisa é de natureza qualitativa, seguindo procedimento metodológico de revisão bibliográfica de livros, artigos de revistas científicas e sites da internet, os quais relatam fatos, histórias e trabalhos acadêmicos voltados ao objeto do estudo. De forma surpreendente, embora o capelão desenvolva um notável trabalho no campo sociorreligioso, há um déficit de conhecimento sobre a missão e as atividades desenvolvidas por ele junto às instituições militares e religiosas. Deste modo, este estudo proporciona certa visibilidade e notoriedade ao capelão militar, tendo como referência uma leitura crítica de filmes bélicos. A pesquisa, realizada no campo da comunicação cinematográfica, de modo particular, nas narrativas fílmicas, tem por objetivo extrair, agregar e justificar – de forma direta – os principais temas que estão presentes nas imagens, nos textos e nos sons das cenas, cujo personagem do capelão militar se enquadra, e - de forma indireta -, por meio dos elementos que fazem referência à sua missão institucional, agregada ao campo religioso no qual o capelão está imerso como oficial do culto. A pesquisa enumera, sobretudo, a partir da análise de conteúdo, as virtudes, as qualidades, os defeitos, os vícios, os estereótipos e os clichês, bem como as expressões gestuais e verbais que caracterizam e alimentam o imaginário da construção desse personagem no mundo cinematográfico. Assim sendo, os elementos presentes nas representações dos capelães militares evidenciam sobremaneira o poder simbólico que o personagem exerce, tanto no campo religioso quanto no campo militar, social e político. / [en] This work aims to elaborate an unprecedented analysis on the representation of the military chaplain, as a character, in Hollywood war films Saving Private Ryan and Peal Harbor and in the authoral films “The Great War and Paisan. For this, it was observed the historical trajectory of cinema, its use as a communication and propaganda language, its theoretical references, which corroborate the construction of the character in the religious and social field. The research is qualitative in nature, following a methodological procedure of bibliographic review of books, articles from scientific journals and internet sites, which report facts, stories and academic works aimed at the object of study. Surprisingly, although the chaplain develops a remarkable work in the socio-religious field, there is a lack of knowledge about the mission and the activities carried out by him with military and religious institutions. Thus, this study provides a certain visibility and notoriety to the military chaplain, having as reference a critical reading of war films. The research, carried out in the field of cinematographic communication, in particular, in film narratives, aims to extract, aggregate and justify - directly - the main themes that are present in the images, texts and sounds of the scenes, whose character the military chaplain fits, and - indirectly -, through the elements that refer to his institutional mission, added to the religious field in which the chaplain is immersed as an official of the cult. The research lists, above all, based on content analysis, the virtues, qualities, defects, vices, stereotypes and clichés, as well as the gestural and verbal expressions that characterize and feed the imagination of the construction of this character in the cinematographic world. Therefore, the elements present in the representations of the military chaplains greatly evidence the symbolic power that the character exerts, both in the religious field and in the military, social and political field.

Thèse numérisée par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

No description available.

Cette étude s’intéresse au discours des anciens combattants dans le cinéma français mettant en scène la Grande Guerre entre 1918 et 1939. L’objectif est de démontrer que le film propose une contre-histoire en permettant aux poilus d’exprimer leurs visions et leurs opinions sur 14-18 et sur la société de l’entre-deuxguerre. Utilisant leur expérience du front, les cinéastes deviennent historiens et témoins à la fois. Le film répond à un souci de préservation de la mémoire. Ayant été écarté de l’écriture de l’Histoire officielle, le témoignage des combattants se transpose dans l’image. Ils rétablissent ainsi les omissions et les inexactitudes. Parallèlement, le contexte politico-social influence l’interprétation du conflit, donnant lieu à des films commémoratifs ou politisés. Plus largement, cette étude s’interroge sur les permanences et les ruptures dans le discours dans l’entre-deux-guerre. Elle permet d’observer que la fiction peut en même temps être un témoignage historique de la Grande Guerre et une représentation du temps présent, en proposant une relecture des évènements. / The main focus of this study is based upon the views and opinions on the Great War from the point of views of the soldiers whom fought in the Great War through the medium of French cinema between 1918 and 1939. The objective is to give an alternative perspective of allowing the soldiers to give their point of view of the events and experiences during the four years of the great war of 1914-1918. Using first hand experiences from being on the front line, the filmmaker becomes a historian as he tells the story of the war veterans; the film can then be used as a way to preserve the memory of these events. There has been an omission of these testimonies from official historical documentation and so these films allow for some inaccuracies to be resolved. Meanwhile, the political and social context influences the interpretation of the conflict, giving rise to films or politicized memorials. More broadly, this study examines the continuities and ruptures in the discourse during the period between the two World Wars. It can be seen that fiction can simultaneously be a historical viewpoint of the Great War and a representation of the times, providing a reinterpretation of events.

Cette étude s’intéresse au discours des anciens combattants dans le cinéma français mettant en scène la Grande Guerre entre 1918 et 1939. L’objectif est de démontrer que le film propose une contre-histoire en permettant aux poilus d’exprimer leurs visions et leurs opinions sur 14-18 et sur la société de l’entre-deuxguerre. Utilisant leur expérience du front, les cinéastes deviennent historiens et témoins à la fois. Le film répond à un souci de préservation de la mémoire. Ayant été écarté de l’écriture de l’Histoire officielle, le témoignage des combattants se transpose dans l’image. Ils rétablissent ainsi les omissions et les inexactitudes. Parallèlement, le contexte politico-social influence l’interprétation du conflit, donnant lieu à des films commémoratifs ou politisés. Plus largement, cette étude s’interroge sur les permanences et les ruptures dans le discours dans l’entre-deux-guerre. Elle permet d’observer que la fiction peut en même temps être un témoignage historique de la Grande Guerre et une représentation du temps présent, en proposant une relecture des évènements. / The main focus of this study is based upon the views and opinions on the Great War from the point of views of the soldiers whom fought in the Great War through the medium of French cinema between 1918 and 1939. The objective is to give an alternative perspective of allowing the soldiers to give their point of view of the events and experiences during the four years of the great war of 1914-1918. Using first hand experiences from being on the front line, the filmmaker becomes a historian as he tells the story of the war veterans; the film can then be used as a way to preserve the memory of these events. There has been an omission of these testimonies from official historical documentation and so these films allow for some inaccuracies to be resolved. Meanwhile, the political and social context influences the interpretation of the conflict, giving rise to films or politicized memorials. More broadly, this study examines the continuities and ruptures in the discourse during the period between the two World Wars. It can be seen that fiction can simultaneously be a historical viewpoint of the Great War and a representation of the times, providing a reinterpretation of events.