Celluloid Anzacs: representations of the Great War in Australian cinema and television dramas

This thesis examines eighty years of Australian film and television drama productions about World War One, in order to determine what versions of it they construct. The war has become a central part of Australian national mythology, and the cinema is a significant explorer of national myths, hence the value of this study for Australian social history and cinema studies. The films are examined in the light of the environment that shaped them - industrial, economic, political and social, with particular reference to the development of Australian nationalism and of the Anzac legend. We also examine what evidence the films chose to use or ignore, what external verifying referents they adopted, what claims to authenticity and truthfulness they made, and what impact they had on contemporary society. The films demonstrate change over time. Films made during the war itself consistently pictured a chauvinistic and jingoistic Imperial struggle, couched as the truth, in response firstly to popular sentiment and then to government pressure. Between the two world wars, the films tended towards a comic portrayal of the war, usually centred on the mythic archetypical Anzac, whose popular larrikin-nationalist image was carefully contained within a conservative Imperial framework. After the revival of both the cinema and of Australian nationalistic sentiment in the late 1960s and early 1970s, war film making reached a peak in the 1980s, especially for television. The majority of these war films promoted the revised Anzac legend, which glorified Australian uniqueness while attacking Britain and condemning war. A few productions offered alternatives to, or attacks on, the heroic Anzac myth. At the same time, this study reveals that the First World War has consistently been constructed as a significant event in Australian history, overwhelmingly positioning the war as one which defined or revealed the nationhood and identity of Australia.