After intensively watching death, destruction and misery in about 100 war movies, Imperial War Museum curator Laura Clouting admits she needs a change of pace: “I’m absolutely dying to watch something a little more lighthearted. I need some Jurassic Park, some Sister Act!”
Clouting is curating a major new exhibition that goes behind the scenes of some of the most famous war movies, from The Dam Busters to Das Boot to War Horse.
Opening to the public on Friday, the immersive show will explore a movie genre which shows little sign of going away, or waning in popularity.
Clouting has, necessarily, sat through lots of movies. “It makes me realise just how big and how enduring the genre is, there are so many war films. Cinema has got this appetite for understanding conflict and it is because war is the most extreme human experience, whether you are a soldier or a civilian.”
The museum last held a war movie show in 1970; a very different exhibition in that technology meant they could only use stills.
This time visitors will be able to watch lots of excerpts, whether Alec Guinness blowing up the bridge on the River Kwai, or Donald Duck doing his bit for the collective effort during the second world war.
There will also be props, costumes and scripts loaned to help shine a brighter light on particular films.
For example, Lawrence of Arabia, in which David Lean cast the statuesque blond figure of Peter O’Toole to play TE Lawrence who was, in truth, barely 5ft 5in.
The exhibition includes one of his robes, his rifle and a letter that may surprise visitors who have read accounts of Lawrence’s mania for self publicity, with journalist Lowell Thomas writing of his “genius for backing into the limelight”. A 1927 letter to director Rex Ingram rails against talk of his role in the Arab revolt being made into a Hollywood film. He writes: “I would hate to see myself parodied on a pitiful basis of my record of what the fellows with me did.”
Elsewhere there is the suit worn by Liam Neeson in Schindler’s List, the military cap worn by Bruno Ganz as Adolf Hitler in Downfall, and a Santa hat worn by Jake Gyllenhaal’s bored marine character in Jarhead.
In another compare-and-contrast section, footage from one of the most popular war films, Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, is shown with actual footage from the D-Day landings.
Clouting said the show was “an idea that the museum had wanted to grapple with for a long time”.
A good peg arrived in the 100th anniversary not only of the Battle of the Somme, but also the film that the War Office commissioned, a remarkable documentary and propaganda film that was watched by about 20 million people over six weeks in 1916.
It includes many smiling, cheerful Tommies but there are also far darker moments. “It is quite frank,” said Clouting. “The film does not hold back from showing you images of the dead or the wounded.”
Clouting is hoping there are many films included that visitors will recall with fondness. But there are also movies covered where film makers have got it very wrong.
The woefully inaccurate U-571, for example, which was discussed in parliament after it portrayed US navy submariners capturing an Enigma cipher machine from the Germans.
An arguably worse example is Objective Burma, which has Errol Flynn leading American paratroopers defeating the Japanese, ignoring the fact that it was a largely British and Commonwealth conflict.
“There was such outrage that it was banned from British cinemas within a week,” said Clouting. “People are furious with this film for making out that the Americans won [that conflict].”
• Real to Reel: A Century of War Movies at IWM London, 1 July to 8 January 2017
• This article was amended on 30 June 2016. An earlier version misnamed the curator of the exhibition as Lucy Clouting. This has been corrected to say Laura Clouting.
