IT seems a reasonable calculation: in times of war, audiences might have an appetite for movies about war.
Lured by garish posters that promised a "Rambo -style Rambo -styletake on the Vietnam Warevisionists were confrontakewith a conmically bleak portheit of an ex-P.O.W., Frankie Dunlan, liVietnam claustrophobic squalor on the saddest block in Staten Island.
Martin Kaplan, the director of the Norman Lear Center for the study of entertainment and society at the University of Southern California, points out that cold war audiences were sometimes happy to "marinate in their fears" with films like "On the Beach" and "Fail-Safe".
On the other hand, the heroic credentials of Casablanca's Rick Blaine are immediately established (or at least they were for liberal Second World War audiences) when it is revealed that he ran guns for victims of fascist aggression in the 1930s.
As white, Latin and black actors respectively, stars Daisy Ridley, Oscar Isaac and Boyega better reflect the diversity of our times, which also plays to the international Star Wars audience Disney is developing around the globe.
Cricket historian Raf Nicholson believes the women's game had a novelty factor in the 1930s and 1940s before experiencing the immediate post-war audience boom that all sports enjoyed.
Prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Moran told an anti-war audience in Reston, Virginia, that if "it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this.
His immaculately rounded voice, singing of love and loss, administered the balm that post-war audiences needed.
In A New Hope, Star Wars audiences were first introduced to Tatooine, home planet of Luke Skywalker and hiding place for Obi-Wan Kenobi.
In The Iron Flood, a play about guerrillas in the Russian Civil War, the audience was kept outside the theatre until the Red Army arrived to break open the doors and the audience flooded into the auditorium.
