ABSTRACT
In 1919, Anne Dike and Anne Morgan started, completed, and screened the film The Heritage of France. Heritage proved a novel component of the American Committee for Devastated France (ACDF), a humanitarian agency both women directed to aid French Great War survivors. The movie depicted the pre-war, wartime, and post-war existences of some of the 60,000 people whom the ACDF helped resettle among 80 towns in France’s northeastern Aisne province. Dike and Morgan made the docudrama for four reasons. They hoped its essentialist portrayals of France’s war-damaged communities would raise Americans’ awareness of how the conflict had adversely affected Aisne combatants and civilians. Both women also believed US showings of Heritage would favourably exhibit the ACDF’s manifold commercial, social, agricultural, and accommodational endeavours. Dike and Morgan tangentially anticipated that Heritage-generated revenue would finance restorative ACDF programmes. Finally, Anne Dike and Anne Morgan hoped the film’s use of auto-cameos would entertain post-war inhabitants—especially children—and distract them from their lacklustre post-war reconstruction labours. By late 1919, The Heritage of France had helped Aisne peasants and Anglophone women revive cherished pre-war class and community norms, and transnationally create new post-war roles for women in the Great War Era.
