4: This War Will Be Either Televised or Taped: WWII in the Greek Domestic Entertainment Until the Deregulation (1971–1989)

As a distinct historical period, World War II (WWII) has emerged as a recurring theme in cinema since its invention. Brave heroes, impossible battles, trauma, and dramatic implications have been central in various films, indifferent of origin, date, or style. Landy highlights that the historical film genre, which surfaced from WWII and onward, “often reveals the excesses of monumental history and its fascination with the spectacle and the heroic figure – embodied in stars who assumed the rich, famous, and powerful roles” (Landy, 2001, p. 8). In the following decades, history preoccupied different national arthouse or popular film cultures (to name a few): the 1920s and 1930s Russian pioneers, the Italian Neorealism of the 1940s, the 1950s historical films of Eastern Europe, the Italian peplum, or “sword-and-sandal” movies of the 1960s and blockbuster war films, such as The Dirty Dozen (Robert Aldrich, 1967) or Where Eagles Dare (Brian G. Hutton, 1968) to exploitation subgenres, such as “Macaroni Combat” or “Nampsloitation.” The role of the film industry, the variety of cinematic approaches, and the uses of the cinematic past have shaped our viewpoint on the historical film – a generic term that seems to be culturally contested, as we will scrutinize below.