Reel History:
World war II in film

This is a selective guide to www sites, databases, reference items and other sources in the Barr Smith Library.
For any further help in finding or using these resources,  please come in to see or contact your Research Librarian for History,
Margaret Hosking  ph. 83033706....margaret.hosking@adelaide.edu.au

I am now located on level 2, in the wedge between the 800's and the 900's.
Reference collection is now on level 2 north, in the foyer outside the Barr Smith Reading Room.
Special Collections is now on level 1 south.
For microforms use the REQUEST option in the library catalogue and select "Joint store and Intercampus request".

Contents

First step:

Establish the exact details of your film by using the Internet Movie database or the All Movie Guide
where you will find release date, director, actors and maybe a bit about the film.

Searching for film reviews

Film & television literature index with full text

FTLI is definitely the best place to look for journal articles on film.
It indexes 150 film and television journals from 30 countries cover-to-cover and 200 other journals selectively for articles on film and television.
Search results can be sorted by date ascending (in the blue bar above the search results) and some include reviews from Variety back to the 1940's (and earlier!)

Newspapers are also useful as sources of film reviews and discussions.
Factiva provides full text and indexing of hundreds of newspapers, mostly from the 1990's onwards, but the Washington Post is available full text from 1984 and the New York Times is available full text from June 1980 and abstracts from January 1, 1969.

If you have trouble with older film reviews (1939-1976) try looking in newspapers near the date that the film was released.
We hold older issues of newspapers on microfilm.
MICROFILM PER 3 New York Times 1857- and index
Reference collection 05 N53y

MICROFILM PER 54 The Times (London) 1785- and index
Reference collection 05 T58a
Full text available online from the State Library - Times digital archive........ to which SLSA even offers home access!

Historic Australian newspapers 1803-1954 from the National Library of Australia

also try for older articles in:

JSTOR is a full text searchable library of journals (mainly in the social sciences and humanities) which contains full content of selected journals from their first issue up to 3-5 years ago.
Good for older articles - use date limits.

Periodicals Index Online (PIO)
A database of millions of articles published in the arts, humanities and social sciences since approximately 1800, so you can look for articles (including reviews) published at a particular time, eg, 1950-1953.
From the PIO results screen there is a link to Periodicals Archive Online which provides access to the full text of hundreds of journals.
Otherwise, many of the older journals are held either in the BSL or State Library - check catalogues.

More information can be found on the Library Resource guide for Film and cinema resources, compiled by Jennifer Osborn.

For articles that provide background to the films

History

Historical abstracts with fulltext,
does not include the USA

America: History and life with full text

Interdisciplinary

Academic OneFile
Broad international multidisciplinary database, providing full text for a large proportion of the 8000 journals covered.

Academic Search Premier
Iinternational database includes 8000 journals from all subject areas, and provides the full text of articles from over 4000 of those journals

JSTOR is a full text searchable library of journals (mainly in the social sciences and humanities) which contains full content of selected journals from their first issue up to 3-5 years ago.Good for older articles, 1939-

Project Muse full text of nearly 250 quality journal titles from 40 scholarly publishers covering the fields of history, politics etc.

Periodicals Index Online (PIO)
A database of millions of articles published in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Coverage goes back 300 years, so it is very useful for finding articles from history journals over the past 60 or so years.
From the PIO results screen there is a link to Periodicals Archive Online which provides access to the full text of hundreds of journals. Otherwise, many of the older journals are held either in the BSL or State Library - check catalogues.

Web resources

General Film/Video resources from the Voice of the Shuttle website.
Includes:
Internet Movie database,
All Movie Guide
These contain basic information on thousands of films.

History in Film

The Perilous Fight - America's World War II in color - a PBS documentary

Screenonline: War and conflict (UK)

Savages, Swine, & Buffoons: Hollywood's Selected Stereotypical Characterizations of the Japanese, Germans, and Italians in Films Produced During World War II
by Ralph R. Donald, Images, #8: May 99

War movies and war propaganda: a bibliography of materials in the UC Berkeley Library
Includes books, journal articles and essays from edited collections.
Book and journal titles need to be checked in our library catalogue.

Oral history archives of World War II

Paths of Memory

For specific films, these may be useful:

Casablanca

Wikipedia's entry is great!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casablanca_(film)

Since you went away

Women and the Home front during World war II

Voices of World War II: experiences from the front and at home (Univrsity of Kansan-Missouri City Libraries)

Twelve o'clock high

Battle of Britain history site (RAF)

Battle of Britain - Recollections (Imperial War Museum)

Battle of Britain (BBC)

Bridge on the River Kwai

David Lean website at the BFI.

Australia War Memorial

Bridge on the River Kwai...from diggerhistory, an unofficial military history site

Bridge on the River Kwai - from wikipedia!

Hope and Glory

Remembering the Blitz: Museum of London

Saving Private Ryan

D- Day at the Imperial War Museum

D-Day anniversary special - Time Magazine

D-Day anniversary : special reports : Guardian Unlimited

Encyclopaedia Britannica's guide to Normandy 1944

Roma citta aperta
L'Armee des ombres/Army of shadows
Lacombe Lucien

Simon Kitson's Vichy web-page
especially
Deportation
Collaboration

Conditions & politics in occupied Western Europe, 1940-1945.
A fully searchable database of over 22,000 British Government records or almost 180,000 images or pages taken from PRO class FO 371 in The National Archives at Kew. It provides researchers with a logical, interdisciplinary research resource, and allows this unique primary source material to be quickly accessed by academics and students, writers and researchers. In addition to document files from The National Archives this digital edition includes a picture gallery.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia article on France

and other resources on the library Resource Guide for Modern France

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia article on Italy

Great Dictator
Life is beautiful

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia article on Italy

Charlie Chaplin (BFI)

Charlie Chaplin

Conditions & politics in occupied Western Europe, 1940-1945.
A fully searchable database of over 22,000 British Government records or almost 180,000 images or pages taken from PRO class FO 371 in The National Archives at Kew. It provides researchers with a logical, interdisciplinary research resource, and allows this unique primary source material to be quickly accessed by academics and students, writers and researchers. In addition to document files from The National Archives this digital edition includes a picture gallery.

Encyclopedias and dictionaries
for background and definitions

History

There are a large number of WWII reference tools to be found at Reference collection 940.53 - Have a browse!
(in the foyer outside the Barr Smith Reading Room)

Reference collection 940.5303 Z12w
World War II in Europe : an encyclopedia, ed. D. T. Zabecki, 1999

Reference collection 940.53 D285o
The Oxford companion to World War II, ed. I.C.B. Dear, 1995

Reference collection 940.303 C573h
The home front encyclopedia : United States, Britain, and Canada in World Wars I and II, James Ciment, 3 vols, 2007

Reference collection 940.5344 G662h
Historical dictionary of World War II France : the Occupation, Vichy, and the Resistance, 1938-1946, ed. B. M. Gordon, 1998

other useful encyclopedias include:

Reference collection 941.085 A226c
A companion to contemporary Britain, 1939-2000, ed.Paul Addison, 2005

Reference collection 940.542103 T577b
Brassey's D-Day encyclopedia : the Normandy invasion A-Z, B. Tillman , 2004

Reference collection 355.003 F831e
Encyclopedia of 20th century warfare, ed. Noble Frankland, 1989
browse in Reference collection 355 for military history

Reference collection 940.5318 E56
Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, I. Gutman, 4 vols, 1990
browse in Reference collection 940.5318 for Holocaust

Film

Reference books on motion pictures will be found in the
Reference collection at 791.4....... The most useful are listed below.

Main collection 791.4365803 D2477e
Davenport, R. Encyclopedia of war movies: the authoritative guide to movies about wars of the 20th century, 2004

Reference collection 791.4303 M167.3
International dictionary of films and filmmakers. 4v. 1997-1998
Lots of background information and further references.

Reference collection 791.43092 W149w
Wakeman, John World film directors. 1987-88. 2v.
Biographical articles, include appraisal of films followed by a list of films and of articles about them.

Main collection 791.4016 M268f
Manchel, F. Film study : an analytical bibliography. v1. - 1990-

Reference collection 791.4365803 L284e
Langman, L. Encyclopedia of American war films. 1989.
Gives a synopsis of the films but no references to articles about them.

Main collection 791.43094403 O818h
Historical dictionary of French cinema, ed. D. Ischerwitz, 2007
No specific articles on the course films but an excellent bibliography (esp p 451)

There are articles on" War films" and some of the individual movie titles in:

Main collection 791.4309 S571e Encyclopedia of Hollywood, 1990
Main collection 791.430941 M143e Encyclopedia of British film, 2003
Main collection 791.4303 B386o 100 years of American film

Using Summon and the catalogue

The new Suumon search box on the library's home page is good for"quick and dirty" searching across all the library's print and electronic resources with direct links to any electronic ful ltext.
For any of your films there will be thousands of entries but you can use the left hand column to limit to peer reviewed scholarly articles, books etc.

Prefer the catalogue for searches on exact titles, authors and subject headings......

In subject heading or guided keyword search use terms such as:
For film:
War films
War motion pictures
World war 1939 1945 Motion pictures and the war
Motion pictures United States......France....... etc
Women in motion pictures

For the historical background:
World war 1939 1945 personal narratives
World war 1939 1945 social aspects....browse
World War, 1939-1945--Aerial operations, American....browse
World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns--France--Normandy
Operation Overlord
World war 1939 1945 Underground movements
World war 1939 1945 Collaborationists......browse countries
World war 1939 1945....and add keywords.... home front
France History German occupation
Europe history military
World War, 1939-1945 Underground movements
World War, 1939-1945 Prisoners and prisons, Japanese
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Italy
Burma-Siam Railroad History. World War, 1939-1945
Prisoners and prisons, Japanese.
World War, 1939-1945 Atrocities.
Prisoners of war Thailand

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Last update:
Margaret Hosking
August 2010