The Great War in the Films of the 1920's

In the decade following the end of the Great War, cinema audiences boomed and movies were by far the most popular source of entertainment in the country. It was natural that the momentous events of 1914-1918 would feature on the screen in some form or another but exactly how could such a medium accurately and sympathetically represent this experience? Andy Moody draws on work he did for his MA dissertation on early post war cinema to examine the question.

The 1920’s produced many innovative, thrilling and imaginative popular films of the conflict, some of which have endured but most have been forgotten by all but historians and commentators on popular culture. Taking a look at the films of the 1920’s and how the war was presented back to the people who had lived through it, the attempts at memorialisation and the introduction of melodrama, holds a mirror up to a traumatised society and a nation looking for meaning in a post war world that had changed forever.

Andy looks at films such as The Lost Battalion, Ypres, Mons, The Big Parade, Wings, Tell England, Journey’s End, Splinters and more!

Andy is a WFA member, and completed the MA in Britain and the First World War from Wolverhampton in 2022. He has written and lectured on this subject for the last couple of years, and has also been involved in an independent project to build a full scale working replica of a Medium A Whippet tank which recently made its debut at Bovington Tank Museum 'Tankfest 24’.