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Saving Private Ryan. War and (vs) memory The analysis is concerned with the relations between representation of war in American cinema and its cultural memory based on Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (USA 1998). Based on concepts such as cultural memory, postmemory, representation and realism, multiple aspects of a film work were analyzed: the plot, image, sound, and John Williams' musical score. Hollywood war films through referencing genre traditions, patriotic musical style and iconic imagery are capable of influencing the ways society remembers and imagines war. In case of Saving Private Ryan filming techniques used for the combat scenes play a particular role. Influenced by the original World War II combat documentaries the filmmakers achieved the viewer's full immersion in depicted combat, as opposed to the older war cinema, where technological means allowed the camera to only observe the events. Key words: combat film; Saving Private Ryan; Steven Spielberg; collective memory; representation;