It's Everybody's War

There's something more personal about this wartime feature as, narrated by Henry Fonda, it shows us a normal American town going from never believing they could be attacked to dealing with the aftermath of Pearl Harbour and beyond. The ordinary lads who train using second hand kit and wooden machine guns soon depart for the Philippines and there meet the full force of the encroaching, highly trained and well armed, foe. Many are killed, many are taken prisoner and the message for those at home is to persevere. Initially, bad news is the exception and it doesn't really govern the behaviour of the majority. Sadly, though, those devastating telegrams become more frequent and so the efforts to recycle just about everything and the encouragement to buy war bonds goes into overdrive. The choice of Fonda to voice this story works effectively as a man who could be anyone's neighbour, friend, or parent and his understated commentary is punchy without being jingoistic. As a piece of film, well we have seen much of the archive used here before and it's not really very imaginatively exploited, but it still brings home something of the terrors of warfare and as it says on the billboard: "fat makes explosive" so nothing goes to waste.

Henry Fonda narrates this Oscar-nominated propaganda piece about a small town's reactions to the fall of the Philippines in the Second World War.

The War begins to touch the town even before it starts; its National Guard unit is called up for training, and is shipped out to the Philippines. The town reacts spasmodically at first, but by the end of the film, is firmly committed to the effort.

This is the image that Hollywood presented to its audiences, as indeed, did all media: a sleeping giant waking slowly to fight evil enemies, confident of victory. It was also the image that the Japanese cinema offered to its audiences, Germany to its audiences.... every nation did much the same; no one wished to think they were fighting a hopeless cause, so this was the standard line.

This movie did not win the Academy Award in its category. It lost to a four-way tie and similarly-themed short subjects.