Abstract
The First and mostly the Second World Wars have been often supported by Hollywood, which produced many propaganda movies. For instance even the classic Casablanca by Michael Curtiz had been shot in order to glorify the French Resistance and the US Army. But during the 1970s, we can observe a real breaking-off between Hollywood and the war (G. Chaubert, www.thucyclide.com). Only one movie, The Green Berets (Ray Kellogg, 1968), has been directed during the Vietnam War. This pro-war action movie with John Wayne was an exception. In fact, all the other movies on the Vietnam, which have all been shot after the war, show the unpopularity of the Vietnam War. Those movies bring the audience to think about the war by denouncing its negative effects.
They also highlight the fact that the State turns the soldiers into killing machines. (T. Dirks, www.filmsite.org). To analyze this phenomenon, we can focus on two major movies: Apocalypse Now, directed by Francis Ford Coppola in 1979, which was one of the first movies dealing with the Vietnam War, and Full Metal Jacket, directed by Stanley Kubrick in 1987. We can first compare the plots, atmospheres and structures of these movies, and then their relationships to history.
