1. Interview with Mr Richard Schickel – film critic at Times magazine and
director of documentary movies about film people (Charlie Chaplin,
Frank Capra, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg). His most recent film
is You Must Remember This, on the Warner Bros Studios. Web -
www.richardschickel.com
Viasat History: What do you think of the Pentagon policy of asking to read
and have the right to modify war film scripts in return to its assistance with
military equipment, access to restricted locations etc.? Is it a fair trade?
Richard Schickel: It’s their stuff and I think they have a right to give or with hold it as they see fit.
I know that sounds un-democratic, but the interest is not to show that war is hell, and I can
understand that. They need to show it as heroic and necessary, which it sometimes is, of course.
It seems to me that ALL the truly great war movies are, in fact, anti-war movies, and they rather
obviously have to be made outside Pentagon supervision, which requires either more money or
great ingenuity. For example, Sam Fuller made The Big Red One in Israel, using their
equipment, which was clever and cheap of him and produced a great movie. Also, please
observe that no anti-war movie can be made in the midst of war, when everyone, Hollywood
included, is whipping up patriotic sentiment. I don’t know if the phrase “fair trade” is applicable to
this discussion. Of course, it never is and it is wilfully naïve for a producer to seek Pentagon
cooperation when he intends to make an anti-war film. Let’s be real.
VH: Some consider that the military implication in American war movies is in fact advertising for
the army service. It was said, for example, that Pearl Harbor was a huge recruiting poster for the
army. What is your opinion?
RS: I don’t know if Pearl Harbor was a recruiting poster, in that it took up what is probably the
greatest military disaster in our history. It was just a really bad film. I do think the Pentagon can
afford to be more realistic about history - as opposed say to considerations of the Iraq war - than
it is. But no one has ever said it is a particularly bright bureaucracy. But here, I think, the
producers’ desire to make a special effects spectacle rather than a nuanced consideration of a
disaster played into the government’s hands. They were on the same page.
VH: Why do you think that a film like Let There Be Light, of John Huston, in 1946, was banned
for over 30 years in America and why did this rejection end during the ‘70s? Was it because of
the New Hollywood era?
RS: It’s obvious, isn’t it, that an accounts of battle fatigue, requiring psychiatric intervention, would
scare the wits out of the military in the immediate aftermath of World War II. But the lack of
release contributed to the film’s legendary status, as did the fact that Huston and Agee became in
those years major cultural figures. Also, psychiatry achieved much more acceptance in the post
war years, so the military could show itself taking care of wounded minds as well as bodies. I
don’t think this picture’s surfacing had anything to do with the “new” Hollywood.
VH: How much damage does the Pentagon involvement do to the personal touch of a war film
director?
RS: Most directors making war movies with Pentagon cooperation don’t have a personal touch.
They are just efficient craftsmen. The really good ones make their war movies without official
cooperation

2. VH: Two of the most representative movies of the New Hollywood – Apocalypse Now and The
Deer Hunter – are extraordinary testimonies on the reality of war. What was their role in the era,
at a time when America was still trying to recuperate from the war?
RS: Vietnam was unique in that it was already such a widely loathed war when these movies
appeared. There was thus a pre-existent audience for these movies, which was not the case for
other wars. These films did not so much mobilize opinion as reflect and focus it. The war’s
supporters of course hated these movies. But there were plenty of people
who agreed with them - enough to make them hits
VH: It is considered that movies like Jaws and Star Wars were the beginning of the end of the
New Hollywood. Why?
RS: Films like those you mention represented a new release pattern, aimed exclusively at the
youth audience, and aimed as well at huge first-weekend grosses. Hollywood has continued
making movies aimed at more adult audiences, but the focus from the mid ‘70s onward has been
on blockbusters for kids - special effects spectacles, raunchy comedies, etc. This means that the
old mass audience, composed of wide ranging demographics is no more—except for maybe one
or two movies a year, like The Dark Knight.
VH: How would you characterize the period between the ‘60s and the ‘80s in film?
RS: Too vast a question. Let’s just say that in the late 60s and 70s, with movies like Bonnie and
Clyde and Chinatown a desperate Hollywood was willing to take a more than usually larger
chance on self-conscious “art,” with smaller budgets but higher aspirations. But “blockbusters”
like the ones you named - and don’t forget The Sound of Music - changed all that. Turned out
that you could sometimes make more money than ever before if you were willing to take those
huge, costly gambles. That’s where, finally, the studios’ largest energies went.