In what follows I point out that wartime propaganda – resulting from the cooperation of the state and Hollywood – had such a distorting effect on the representation of war that wartime film, (Wake Island 1942 directed by John Farrow) based on real events provides a more fictional and highly glorifying image of war than a truly fictional representation (Saving Private Ryan directed by Stephen Spielberg) which has a temporal and moral distance from the second world war and therefore is able to aim a more realistic and naturalistic representational strategy.