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movie also tends to downplay Alvin York’s intense religiosity. Instead, it focuses
on his yeoman- like efforts to earn money farming and his prowess with a
rifle— Adamic traits that identify York with legendary frontier heroes like Daniel
Boone. As mentioned earlier, the film foreshortens York’s religious conversion and
makes it much more dramatic. Its rendition of York’s other key conversion, from
pacifist to armed combatant, is quite accurate but also highly stylized with its war-
ring voices alternately championing God and State in York’s head, Max Steiner’s
stirring mood music and the ethereal beauty of the mountainous landscape suf-
fused in misty light evoked an Edenic Amer i ca well worth fighting for. The battle
scenes are putatively accurate, though the single- handed nature of York’s amazing
exploits was challenged by some of his comrades- in- arms who felt that their role
in the battle was slighted. Fi nally, the film’s culminating depiction of York being
gifted outright with his dream farm by grateful Tennesseans brushed aside the fact
that the actual 400- acre farm was not really a “gift.” In 1919 the Nashville Rotary
Club raised money for a $6,250 down payment on a farm that cost $25,000. York
was saddled with an $18,750 mortgage that he couldn’t afford. He ended up deeply
in debt later in life— a somber real ity that would have undercut the film’s affirma-
tion of the Cincinnatus- like citizen- soldier who reluctantly goes off to war, becomes
a hero, returns safely, and is richly rewarded for his efforts: Warner Bros.’ propa-
gandistic message to an American public not eager to fight another war in Europe.
Slaughterhouse- Five (1972)
Synopsis
Slaughterhouse- Five is an American anti- war/science fiction film based on Kurt Von-
negut’s eponymous 1969 novel. Adapted for the screen by Stephen Geller; directed
by George Roy Hill; and starring Michael Sacks, Ron Leibman, and Valerie Perrine,
the film tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, an American soldier in World War II who is
captured during the Battle of the Bulge. As a prisoner of war (POW) Pilgrim wit-
nesses the aftermath of the Allied firebombing of Dresden. He is later abducted by
aliens which causes him to become “unstuck in time,” constantly reliving his World
War II experiences: an apt meta phor for post- traumatic stress syndrome.
Background
On 22 December 1944, during the sixth day of the Battle of the Bulge, Kurt Von-
negut, Jr., a 22- year- old battalion scout with the 423rd Regiment, 106th Infantry
Division, was captured (along with 7,000 other G.I.s) by advancing German forces
and imprisoned at Dresden, Germany. Though Dresden was an open city with no
military installations or air defenses, the Allied High Command deci ded to fire-
bomb it anyway, presumably as payback for the Nazi bombing of Coventry earlier
in the war. In three separate air raids on 13–14 February 1945 (ironically Shrove
Tuesday and Ash Wednesday), Royal Air Force (RAF) and United States Army Air
Forces (USAAF) bombers dropped more than 700,000 phosphorous bombs on “the
Florence on the Elbe.” The resulting firestorm, reaching temperatures of 3,000° F,
obliterated 1,600 acres in the center of the city and incinerated some 25,000