Re: Films depicting political transformation / end of regimes (was: H-Film query)

From: Leo Enticknap <[email protected]>

Marco Bohr writes:

>> "The film addresses the impending end of the
> regime through a complex series of metaphors and symbols to avoid
> censorship. Does anyone know of similar cases where cinematic production
> is seemingly part of a major political transformation?"

Some random
thoughts, off the top of my head:

'The Life Story of David Lloyd
George' (UK, 1919, Maurice Elvey) - although the reason for the movie's
suppression was almost certainly the credibility deficit that its
release would have caused had it been shown, given the scandals
engulfing DLG by that stage (the reaction would probably have been
similar to if a eulogistic biopic about Bob Filner or Rob Ford was
released now), the fact remains that it is remarkable for the intensity
with which it promotes the idea that serious social reform is necessary
if the war was to have achieved anything. Also post-WWI in the UK,
'Dawn' (1927, Herbert Wilcox) implicitly challenges the political
rehabilitation of Germany following the Locarno treaties, while
'Remembrance' (1927, Bert Wynne) criticises society in general, and by
implication, the government in particular, for abandoning war veterans
to recession and poverty. In many ways, these films anticipated
political changes that were yet to happen: the rise of nationalism in
Germany would be widely recognised as an international threat about a
decade later, while in the aftermath of WWII, state support for the
reintegration of demobbed military personnel became a major (and
arguably THE major) political priority.

There was also a spate of
mainly non-fiction films made in the immediate aftermath of WWII in the
UK, basically articulating socialist propaganda (e.g. Jill Craigie's
'The Way We Live' about town planning, and Paul Rotha's 'Land of
Promise', about housing and public services, both 1946), which their
makers claimed received very limited distribution because the film
industry had links to the Conservative Party and therefore saw to it
that the movies sunk without trace (they actually sunk without trace
because the cinemagoing public simply were not willing to pay to see
documentaries in any significant numbers, however much the the highbrow
critics wanted them to and attempted to put Grierson and his ilk on a
pedestal in their attempts to promote them: cinema owners knew it and
chose their films accordingly). Yet the things these movies campaigned
for basically ended up happening.

In Germany I'd have thought 'Kolberg'
(Germany, 1945, Veit Harlan) would be a pretty obvious one -
characterised by Eric Rentschler in 'The Ministry of Illusion' as
'self-reflexive self-destruction'. There wasn't any avoidance of
censorship going on, though: on the contrary, the movie was sanctioned
by the regime under which it was made, exhorting its audience to, in
effect, go down with the ship.

'Day of Wrath' (1943) in Denmark? Though
it's just one of a ton of occupation metaphor movies that were made in
WWII Europe under the Nazis.

There was an Italian adaptation of 'The
Postman Always Rings Twice', the name of which escapes me and which was
made around the time Mussolini's regime collapsed. The defiance of
authority (specifically in respect of Roman Catholic sexual morality)
theme in the film has been interpreted as open defiance of the regime's
censors and thus early evidence of the writing being on the
wall.

---
Leo Enticknap
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