Images of the Great War. War movies in Polish cinemas in the first decade of the Second Polish Republic

From the beginning of the 20th century, images of war were mostly produced through audio-visual methods. This also applies to the Great War, although its earliest on-screen portrayals remain little-known today. Documentary footage filmed during the First World War was often destroyed or dispersed in the interwar period. Nevertheless, it has introduced new cinematic techniques and themes later seen in war reportages. Feature films about the Great War were generally made after it ended. France and Hollywood mostly produced battle scenes and anti-war “posters”. Although not addressing the subject of war directly, some German films of the period were described by the film expert Anton Kaes as “post-traumatic cinema” or “shell shock cinema”. In the newly independent Poland, the Great War first appeared on the screens in the context of the legend of the Polish Legions. The young and underfunded Polish cinematography had difficulties in dealing with such a demanding theme, which fact is well illustrated by the unfulfilled ambitions of Ryszard Ordyński’s film Mogiła nieznanego żołnierza (The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier). At the same time, in the 1920s star Western productions arrived in Poland including such famous films as Abel Gance’s J’accuse or Rex Ingram’s The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. They met with great interest among Polish audiences, reaching the rank of blockbusters. These films also triggered discussions in intellectual circles about the ways and the purpose of showing war on screen. The enthusiastic reception of those films may be a counter-argument to the opinion, that the Great War was not properly scrutinised in Poland both on the symbolic and artistic level