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Post by andrew on Feb 2, 2021 22:43:12 GMT -5
Considering Hollywood's reputation as a haven for the left-leaning, they have certainly produced an abundance of pictures with such a clear anti-communist agenda, one wonders who actually paid for them. When France became mired in the Indochina war and the Eisenhower administration began footing the bill, China Gate just happened to be coincidentally released. The film is so obviously designed to drum up political support for the French war in Vietnam, one wonders why they didn't just pass it off as a war bond drive. Despite this, it trips over its own purpose, committing so much time to dealing with race issues, it becomes confusing just what it's about. It's my personal opinion that they were trying to demonstrate that "we're better than they are, but we can be better still." When Director Sam Fuller wanted Nat King Cole for the role of Goldie, Darryl Zanuck reminded him that Cole made more money in a couple of weeks than the entire budget of the movie, and they couldn't afford him. But Cole actually wanted to play the counterfoil to the racist American, and so agreed to work cheap. Irony of ironies, the film was banned in France.  |
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Post by andrew on Feb 2, 2021 23:04:39 GMT -5
Everybody knows about Leni Riefenstahl's absolutely brilliant Triumph des Willens, about the 1934 Nuremburg rally, written to tart up the Fuhrer and legitimize the Rohm putsch, but even in the very last days of the Third Reich propaganda cinema was still coming out. In 1945(!), with enemy armies literally within the borders of the Reich itself, Kolberg was released. It tells the story of Alamo-esque defence of the Kolberg fortress-city against Napoleon. Its purpose was to buck up the sad population and get them out digging antitank ditches. The film is technically interesting because the basic rules of film-making just didn't apply. If a village needed to be burned, they burned a village. Despite its purpose and the "get out there and fight" speeches, it's a pretty good movie. It was not well-received though, even among serving soldiers.
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Post by Aurelia on Feb 3, 2021 10:33:38 GMT -5
Considering Hollywood's reputation as a haven for the left-leaning, they have certainly produced an abundance of pictures with such a clear anti-communist agenda, one wonders who actually paid for them. I think being anti-Communist back then was a necessity - with the whole "Hollywood Blacklist" era continuing into the early 1960's, you'd be ruined if you were even suspected of having any communist leanings. It was a preview of the sort of cancel culture we see today, I suppose. It's odd that the film was banned in France! |
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Post by andrew on Feb 3, 2021 11:08:54 GMT -5
Considering Hollywood's reputation as a haven for the left-leaning, they have certainly produced an abundance of pictures with such a clear anti-communist agenda, one wonders who actually paid for them. I think being anti-Communist back then was a necessity - with the whole "Hollywood Blacklist" era continuing into the early 1960's, you'd be ruined if you were even suspected of having any communist leanings. It was a preview of the sort of cancel culture we see today, I suppose. It's odd that the film was banned in France! I believe they were offended by the suggestion that they couldn't keep things under control there. Or perhaps they just didn't want such a starkly grim depiction of just how bad things were in general distribution. In any event, the film is so chock-full of Team America World Police speeches and antics that there's not the slightest doubt in my mind it was financially backed in some measure by some political faction or other. |
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Post by Aurelia on Feb 3, 2021 11:18:59 GMT -5
A favorite propaganda movie of mine is the Mortal Storm from 1940 - it was made to stir up Americans, who were lingering in an isolationist approach (an approach which was spear-headed by Charles Lindbergh) to the war in Europe.
It powerfully conveyed the tearing of society, abolishment of the individual and rejection of scientific truth that was happening under Nazi power... It also paints an interesting picture of 'the German' versus 'the Nazi' - a plot concept that is woven throughout the movie, even shown through the breakdown of Roth family, when the party demanded loyalty over every other personal tie.
There is a very sad take on the concentration camp in the film, when professor Roth is imprisoned for teaching that there are no biological differences in the general makeup of blood between races... while they acknowledged the existence of camps, this looked more like a rather plush sort of jail. It hits hard for a modern viewer, fully aware of the dichotomy between this scene and the horrors of the real camps.
While it wasn't the first of the Anti-Nazi propaganda films, it was the most effective, I think. Some cite that the timing was bad for the release and that it would have been more pertinent if it had been released a year prior (1939, the same year as Warner Brothers Confession of a Nazi Spy was released). But in the end, MGM released the film a month after the beginning of the Blitzkrieg across Europe was happening and resulting in all MGM movies being banned in Germany.
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Post by andrew on Feb 3, 2021 11:34:09 GMT -5
I suppose Riefenstahl deserves a post of her own. The landmark 1935 Triumph des Willens won awards internationally. It is simply a masterpiece of subtle propaganda - getting messages across through imagery, placement, allegory rather than direct speech (though it has plenty of that too). The film was commissioned by Hitler to document the 1934 party rally at Nuremburg, but she created something much more than that. She created a film in which a Godlike Hitler emerges to save Germany. This was the height of great depression but you'll see none of that in this film. Here, in the opening sequence, Hitler literally descends from the clouds...
Many of the techniques Riefenstahl used - moving cameras, aerial shots, use of music and cinematography - were thought to be firsts, but in fact she had done it before. Der Sieg des Glaubens (1934), a film about Hitler and the 1933 party congress was ordered by the Nazis to be destroyed as it showed an intimate relationship between Hitler and Röhm. Röhm, of course, was murdered in the Night of the Long Knives. The film was thought to be lost until an archive copy was discovered in the 1980s. By contrast, though never naming Röhm by name, Triumph des Willens devotes a significant portion of its rhetoric to "party unity", and ends with chants of "Hitler is the Party!" In other words, forget the SA; they won't be back!.
The film is not banned in Germany today, but may only be screened for educational purposes. It is still part of the core curriculum in most advertising schools worldwide. Almost all television ads have borrowed some technique from Riefenstahl, even to today.
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Post by Aurelia on Feb 3, 2021 13:55:33 GMT -5
I suppose Riefenstahl deserves a post of her own. The landmark 1935 Triumph des Willens won awards internationally. It is simply a masterpiece of subtle propaganda - getting messages across through imagery, placement, allegory rather than direct speech (though it has plenty of that too). The film was commissioned by Hitler to document the 1934 party rally at Nuremburg, but she created something much more than that. She created a film in which a Godlike Hitler emerges to save Germany. This was the height of great depression but you'll see none of that in this film. Here, in the opening sequence, Hitler literally descends from the clouds... Many of the techniques Riefenstahl used - moving cameras, aerial shots, use of music and cinematography - were thought to be firsts, but in fact she had done it before. Der Sieg des Glaubens (1934), a film about Hitler and the 1933 party congress was ordered by the Nazis to be destroyed as it showed an intimate relationship between Hitler and Röhm. Röhm, of course, was murdered in the Night of the Long Knives. The film was thought to be lost until an archive copy was discovered in the 1980s. By contrast, though never naming Röhm by name, Triumph des Willens devotes a significant portion of its rhetoric to "party unity", and ends with chants of "Hitler is the Party!" In other words, forget the SA; they won't be back!. The film is not banned in Germany today, but may only be screened for educational purposes. It is still part of the core curriculum in most advertising schools worldwide. Almost all television ads have borrowed some technique from Riefenstahl, even to today. Hitler needed to kill off all the more liberal elements - the SA and the rumors of their rampart homosexuality... Röhm, who had helped make Hitler, was pretty openly gay from what I understand. I think he also espoused some of the rhetoric of the socialism more than the Nazis really wanted for the future.... but most of the SA troops were from working class backgrounds and wanted a more socialistic bent. I used to throw these elaborate dinner parties with themes to them... I had a Belgian Resistance Meeting for one (an excuse to make Belgian food) and decorated all of the rooms with different "scenes" - the main room had document and passport forging, I got a telegraph sounder set up and had a recording of Morse code playing in the background... littered those parachuted propaganda leaflets around... and set up all the Nazi propaganda in the water closet (where it belonged... LOL!). I had a flat screen in there playing Triumph of the Will on repeat, just as background noise and something to look at in there. I have to say, I didn't really "experience" it while setting it up - when I went in there later, it was pretty horrifying. I put one of those propaganda posters on the inside of the door with Hitler looking god-like (light shining down from sky and all that) and then you hear the cheering and see the parading in that film playing... yeah, creepy as all get out. The WC was terrifying. |
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Post by andrew on Feb 3, 2021 15:29:08 GMT -5
I suppose Riefenstahl deserves a post of her own. The landmark 1935 Triumph des Willens won awards internationally. It is simply a masterpiece of subtle propaganda - getting messages across through imagery, placement, allegory rather than direct speech (though it has plenty of that too). The film was commissioned by Hitler to document the 1934 party rally at Nuremburg, but she created something much more than that. She created a film in which a Godlike Hitler emerges to save Germany. This was the height of great depression but you'll see none of that in this film. Here, in the opening sequence, Hitler literally descends from the clouds... Many of the techniques Riefenstahl used - moving cameras, aerial shots, use of music and cinematography - were thought to be firsts, but in fact she had done it before. Der Sieg des Glaubens (1934), a film about Hitler and the 1933 party congress was ordered by the Nazis to be destroyed as it showed an intimate relationship between Hitler and Röhm. Röhm, of course, was murdered in the Night of the Long Knives. The film was thought to be lost until an archive copy was discovered in the 1980s. By contrast, though never naming Röhm by name, Triumph des Willens devotes a significant portion of its rhetoric to "party unity", and ends with chants of "Hitler is the Party!" In other words, forget the SA; they won't be back!. The film is not banned in Germany today, but may only be screened for educational purposes. It is still part of the core curriculum in most advertising schools worldwide. Almost all television ads have borrowed some technique from Riefenstahl, even to today. Hitler needed to kill off all the more liberal elements - the SA and the rumors of their rampart homosexuality... Röhm, who had helped make Hitler, was pretty openly gay from what I understand. I think he also espoused some of the rhetoric of the socialism more than the Nazis really wanted for the future.... but most of the SA troops were from working class backgrounds and wanted a more socialistic bent. I used to throw these elaborate dinner parties with themes to them... I had a Belgian Resistance Meeting for one (an excuse to make Belgian food) and decorated all of the rooms with different "scenes" - the main room had document and passport forging, I got a telegraph sounder set up and had a recording of Morse code playing in the background... littered those parachuted propaganda leaflets around... and set up all the Nazi propaganda in the water closet (where it belonged... LOL!). I had a flat screen in there playing Triumph of the Will on repeat, just as background noise and something to look at in there. I have to say, I didn't really "experience" it while setting it up - when I went in there later, it was pretty horrifying. I put one of those propaganda posters on the inside of the door with Hitler looking god-like (light shining down from sky and all that) and then you hear the cheering and see the parading in that film playing... yeah, creepy as all get out. The WC was terrifying. +5 Party of Awesomeness. (I used to date a girl who could have translated that Morse in real time. 50 wpm was the minimum standard in her line of employment., which was basically: "Spy". Her specific job was tapping into satellite signals and listening for anything interesting in half a dozen languages. Yes, there really are such people - and they do listen to private phone conversations when they get bored). This is what 50 wpm sounds like. I've never heard that Röhm's dirty laundry had anything to do with his downfall. In fact, it's a challenge to find any senior Nazi party member without some serious skeletons in the closet. Drugs, crime, infidelity, Hitler's own curious romances... I had always heard he was ousted for having ideas of his own (and being a personal enemy of Himmler). But then, I confess I've never delved too deeply into those topics. |
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Post by andrew on Feb 4, 2021 11:37:56 GMT -5
In Soviet cinema, it's harder to find films that *don't* have propagandist overtones than to find ones that do. One of the more subtle ones was 1959's There Will Be No Leave Today. The film, based on a real incident, was actually a student assignment. When a massive WW2 bomb dump is discovered beneath a village, the army is brought in to dispose of it, but the dump is so large they cannot blow it in place without destroying the village, and so they must evacuate the village and the soldiers must begin the highly dangerous task of removing the bombs to a safe distance for demolition. Using real army units and shot on location, the film scored such high marks with party officials for its depiction of the heroic Red Army risking all to protect the grateful proletariat, it was aired on Soviet television on Victory Day for several years running.
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Post by Aurelia on Feb 4, 2021 11:49:41 GMT -5
I've never heard that Röhm's dirty laundry had anything to do with his downfall. In fact, it's a challenge to find any senior Nazi party member without some serious skeletons in the closet. Drugs, crime, infidelity, Hitler's own curious romances... I had always heard he was ousted for having ideas of his own (and being a personal enemy of Himmler). But then, I confess I've never delved too deeply into those topics. Yeah, Röhm was a very odd combination of elements... he was very openly homosexual and at the same time ruthlessly "masculine". He opposed paragraph 175 of German law (that made homosexual acts illegal) - though early on Hitler had as well... as did the communists. Röhm was also seen as a sort of uncouth thug, and as he wanted power over the German military (men who's families had served for generations) there was a bit of a clashing of interests there. Hitler needed the German military on his side... How do I know this? 2020 was a bad year for me (and everyone else, it sounds like); I got a very bad case of shingles in Jan, which was something I didn't think I'd have to worry about for another 20-30 years. I was down for a while and needed something interesting but also ignore-able to watch to help pass the time... there was a docu-series on Hitler's inner circle that really looked at the bizarre interactions and influences of those men closest to Hitler... based on their own writings, or eye witness accounts. What a strange crew. There was this overarching homoerotic quality to the vying for Hitler's affirmation and attention... the whole thing was bizarre. The guy in that video is pretty epic! I guess there are two different keys for dots and dashes. I guess I've never seen a modern telegraph being sent. 😆 Too many old movies! |
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