One World, Big Screen: Hollywood, The Allies, and World War II M. Todd Bennett is a satisfyingly detailed and insightful study of the subject of war as refracted through a Hollywood prism may have been the author’s life work (as he tells us in the introduction), but has a vitality and energy which suggests that it was written in white heat rather than laboured over for years. The book evokes the days when cinema audiences were able to observe the war unfold on the screen in a fashion which could either reflect the realities of the real conflict or move into unlikely, tendentious territory. Bennett’s study is crammed with fascinating, multi-faceted observations on everything from Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca to John Frankenheimer’s later Manchurian Candidate, with a welcome attention to many less familiar items. Noting that Hollywood’s golden age was happening during World War II, Bennett itemises the ideological and philosophical underpinnings of the war films that both transfixed audiences and changed attitudes to the conflict itself. It’s a fascinating read.

One World, Big Screen: Hollywood, The Allies, and World War II by M. Todd Bennett is published by University of North Carolina Press