This thesis examines the politics of World War II memory in Thai screen culture with special reference to films and television series produced between the 1970s and the 2010s. Framed by memory studies and film studies approaches, the thesis hopes to answer 1) how WW II memory on screen is related to other memory texts: monuments, museums and commemorative rituals and 2) how the memory is coded by various genres: romance, biopic, combat film and horror. The project relies on a plurimedial network which has not yet been extensively studied by film scholars in Thailand. Through the lens of memory studies, the on-screen memory is profoundly intermingled with other sites of memory across Thailand and beyond. It potentially is counter-memory and vernacular memory challenging the state's official memory. The politics of WWII memory are also engaged with cultural politics in Thailand in terms of class, gender and ethnicity. The politics of commoners and trauma are given more voice in WWII memory compared to other moments of the national past, which are dominated by the royal-nationalism. From film studies perspectives, the genres mediating WWII memory are shaped by traditions of Thai-Thai and transnational screen culture; the Thai WWII combat film is a newly proposed genre. The thesis also explores directors, the star system, exhibition and reception. The findings should prove that WWII memory on Thai screen serves their roles in memory institutions which construct and maintain mnemonic communities as well as the roles in entertainment and media institutions. Another crucial implication of the research is that politicising WWII memory on the Thai screen can illuminate how memory and visual texts travel. The research likewise manifests its contributions to a better understanding of how Thai screen culture can be positioned within both global memory culture and global screen culture.

Les années 1950 et 1960 apparaissent comme deux décennies d’intense effervescence dans le champ du cinéma thaï. L’adoption, à l’issue de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, du format 16mm par une nouvelle génération de cinéastes donna lieu à l’essor d’une production cinématographique très populaire dans le royaume. Alors que les comédies musicales réalisées par les fondateurs pionniers de la compagnie Phaphayon Siang Si Krung jusqu’en 1941 semblaient promettre la pérenne hégémonie d’un véritable « Hollywood du Siam », ces fictions joyeusement rhapsodiques, filmées avec des moyens de fortune et accompagnées en direct par la légendaire faconde de doubleurs professionnels, rencontrèrent un vaste public de Bangkok aux plus lointains villages de province, dans le cadre de projections en prolongement direct avec les spectacles mixtes d’antan. La disparition accidentelle, le 8 octobre 1970, de l’acteur Mit Chaibancha au cours du tournage d’Insi thong [« L’aigle d’or »] mit cependant un brusque terme à cette expérience, singulièrement tardive, de cinéma oral. La récente constitution d’un fonds d’archives à la Cinémathèque thaï a permis la mise à jour de riches vestiges de cette bien nommée « ère du 16mm ». Cette recherche se propose comme une première tentative historiographique pour exhumer ce patrimoine visuel, à la fois ancré dans la tradition dramatique siamoise et apparu dans le contexte d’une dictature militaire placée sous la complexe influence de son allié américain en ces années de Guerre Froide. / The 1950s and 1960s appear as two decades of intense effervescence in the field of Thai cinema. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the adoption of the 16mm format by a new generation of filmmakers gave rise to a very popular cinematic production in the kingdom. Whereas the musicals directed by the pioneer founders of the Phaphayon Siang Si Krung company until 1941 seemed to promise the perennial hegemony of a real ‘Hollywood of Siam’, these joyously rhapsodic fictions, filmed with makeshift means and accompanied live by the legendary loquaciousness of professional dubbers, encountered a broad public from Bangkok to the most remote provincial villages, within a screening framework stemming directly from earlier mixed shows. Nevertheless, the accidental disappearance of the actor Mit Chaibancha on the 8th of October 1970, during the shooting of Insi thong [« The golden eagle »], put an abrupt end to this singularly belated experience of oral cinema. The recent composition of an archival fund at the Thai Film Archive permitted the bringing to light of rich vestiges from this well-named ‘16mm era’. This research is a first historiographical attempt to exhume this visual patrimony, both embedded in the Siamese dramatic tradition and generated in the context of a military dictatorship that came under the complexe influence of its American ally during these Cold War years.