A TIME OUT OF WAR

US, 1954, 20 minutes, Black and white.
Corey Allen, Barry Atwater.
Directed by Dennis Sanders.

A Time Out of War is a thesis film by Dennis Sanders. It won an Oscar in 1954 for the best short subject. It was also nominated for a United Nations award.

This brief film is a Civil War story, a meeting between a Unionist and a Confederate on opposites sides of a river – with dialogue leading to some kind of mutual understanding. It is a film for peace.

This theme has been used in many films – Hell in the Pacific by John Boorman had Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune as Japanese and American soldier stranded on an island and having to make peace. The French film, Merry Christmas (Joyeux Noel) took the same theme of a truce on Christmas Day in 1914.

Dennis Sanders made a number of films and series for television. His feature films include Crime and Punishment USA, One Man’s Way, Shock Treatment and The Invasion of the Bee Girls.

1. The impact of the film as a short story? Brief plot, human interest and relationships, war themes? Authentic atmosphere, the quality of the anti-war message?

2. The film was made as a university thesis. Its qualities as a piece of academic film-making? Its subsequent commercial popularity, awards? The appeal to the popular audience?

3. Technical qualities: sharpness of the black and white photography, locations, visual presentation of the river, the presentation of the men, close-ups and long shots, across the river, fighting, arguing, shooting, exchanging things, fishing, burying and saluting the dead? Light and darkness, handheld camera? The audience placed in the middle of the war?

4. The musical score and the tones of patriotic themes? The visual impact of the differing uniforms, different accents, sharing the news, sharing the jibes? The unity and division in the war? The futility of war?

5. The men as ordinary men and soldiers, Connor and Alden and representing the North? Craig and his style of the South? Ordinary men in themselves: presence, manner of speaking, ordinary things? The time out of the war? The decision to fish, talk, smoke, coffee and loyalties?

6. The irony of the war in this context? To what purpose? How did the war affect them? The formalities of war as being meaningless?

7. War at the personal level? What sense does it make? Friendliness, shooting, retorts? Finding the dead man? The waging of war at an official level, its repercussions for ordinary soldiers? Ironies of the situation, non-resolution?

8. The quality of the film’s representation of detail, Connor’s shooting, Craig’s replies, scenery, the river, fishing, the talk, the salute to the dead? Craig silhouetted in the distance as the enemy? His view of Connor and Alden?

9. The quality of the message, the reflections of war in twenty-two minutes of visual communication?