The aim of this article is to analyze Louis de Rochemont’s The Ramparts We Watch as a
public relations war effort from the past century. Arising from the informative and
propagandistic strategy of late 1930s newsreels, the aforementioned documentary was
made using very appropriate narrative techniques to award it the dimension of objectivity
and truthfulness characteristic of public relations messages, without losing sight of its
educational and persuasive function. From this standpoint, The Ramparts We Watch
founded a genre and constituted one of the clearest precedents of public relations war films
in America.
