From monsters to victims: the First World War Medical Filmography

di Sophie Delaporte
in Memoria e Ricerca n.s. 38 (2011), p. 57

In a comparative perspective in the time, this article analysed the images filmed by operators of the film Service Cinema of the Army (SCA) affected in the Health service during the Great War and more specially those who relate to the trauma (physical and psychic), with the recent representations of François Dupeyron’s movies entitled The room of the officers and Gabriel Le Bomin Antonin’s fragments. In both cases the images displayed the phenomenon of “derealisation” of the battlefield in particular by the absence of “corporéité” becoming attached for the main part to consequences, far from the horror of the battlefield. Filmography participates as the paper in the phenomenon of “derealisation” of the brutality made for bodies and practices of care. The fictional representations envisage in both cases studied here the traumas under a “romantico-mélo-dramatique” angle being very widely inclined in the sense of a victimization. Key words: Medical filmography, Psychic trauma, War veterans, Facial injuries, Film representations; First World War