WWII, the time when young men from across American--from small farms, ethnic neighborhood blocks, survivors of the depression and the dust bowl, and survivors of mundane lives few of us today could even comprehend--all lined up to register for the draft in droves, even before Pearl Harbor happened. It was an era of stoicism, where most were assigned their lot at birth and few ever ventured beyond, until the lure of seeing a world to which they had little real exposure.
At the end of WWII, those that had survived came home to a world of hero-worship, where everything worked together to help these heroes prosper, for the most part. There was no thought of the nation not being proudly grateful and of the soldiers being the heroes. Accept your adoration, damn your nightmares! And yet, many had their nightmares that wouldn't only exist in dreams: the phantom limbs; the flashes of noise and body parts around them; the unrelenting, numbing fear. It was a different time, a different norm.
In 1946, a visionary group of filmmakers, some who had been war correspondents and some who had been soldiers, and some who intimately knew people devastated by the war joined in a vision toward educational films that accurately portrayed the social issues that the returning soldiers faced. Their goal wasn't to shock, but to educate. Okay, maybe shock somewhat in the name of awareness. This is one of those films.
Some find it trite and don't understand how profound it was for 1946. The War Department and others did not want this shown; I would guess that they did not want the hero worship to diminish and the economic boom to slow.
This was a hard movie to watch, primarily for the reasons that low reviews state: it's boring if you don't stay with it; it's too compressed with one miracle session curing everything, etc. But this film well documents the progression of each different stage of the portrayed trauma responses. For how young psychiatry was at that time, I find this film, from its inception into its concept, through the production and into the way it was banned for 35 years (1981, Cannes) amazing. It reflects the mores of that era in both everyday and professional life. Psychiatry was trying to break free of lobotomies, electroshock therapy, and other horrors.
Amazing, think about it in this perspective--this was actually still under War Department ban until after The Green Berets (1964), The Deer Hunter (1978) and Apocalypse Now (1979) were released.
Let There Be Light was truly too long in the dark.
Review of Let There Be Light
