There’s No Geneva Convention Here: Torture in Three Films Set in World War II

Abstract

This chapter focuses comparatively on different strategies for representing the Axis powers’ use of torture in World War II in Roma, Citta Apeta, (Rome, Open City), Roberto Rossellini, 1945, The Bridge over the River Kwai, David Lean, 1957, and Senjō no Merī Kurisumasu (Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence), Nagisa Oshima, 1983. Scenes pertaining to torture are closely examined in light of the different representational strategies of each film, ranging from neo-realist immersion in historical recreation, Hollywood-style spectacle deployed with irony, and Brechtian distantiation. The ‘Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War’ flouted by the regimes that seized power, by the Italian Fascists and German Nazis, or ones such as the Japanese militarist government who had never signed it are directly referenced in the latter two films. Each uses emblematic imagery of torture to stress how victims resist as acts of courage with important moral consequences, but once again the analysis also highlights in detail how the inscription differs from film to film, and the consequences of that specificity.