Allegory, Redemptionism and Tragic Temptation in the Great War Hollywood Films (1915-1930)

Abstract

The article tracks allegorical aesthetics –and tragic temptation that has gone through it– in some Hollywood productions born during the First World War and during the twenties. The allegorical allusion to the war, in religious and pacifist key, occurs already in the end of The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance, and fully manifests itself in Civilization. The country’s entry into the conflict results in a romance of love plot not exempt from tragic connotations (Hearts of the World), although it will be in the armistice when tragic allegory will come to its end with The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Recovery of the increasingly elusive romanticism of love plot during the twenties will be replicated, in 1930, with a realistic tragedy, without a hint of allegorical transcendentalism: All Quiet on the Western Front.