Propaganda Cinema

British films, more than those of the United States, made considerable advances during World War II. American feature directors, such as John Ford, William Wyler, Frank Capra, and John Huston, made films such as The Battle of the Midway (1942) and Memphis Belle (1944), which used newsreel techniques. Capra’s contribution to the series Why We Fight (1942-1945), which carefully articulated the background to the war, was widely admired as a fresh departure in the utilization of newsreel material. British propaganda was developed through the Crown Film Unit, itself a development of the GPO Film Unit, founded by John Grierson. An early propaganda film, personally financed by Alexander Korda, the documentary-drama The Lion Has Wings (1939, directed by Michael Powell, Brian Desmond Hurst, and Adrian Brunel) was completed within weeks of the declaration of war, but was laughingly unpersuasive. Control of British film production fell to the Ministry of Information with the result that, not only did the quality of British propaganda improve but also that of films generally. The government left the financing of feature films to a broadly sympathetic film industry and few films had problems with officialdom. The most distinguished propaganda films of the war were designed to create a myth of Britishness, of a nation stoically braving out the Blitz and rationing. Films such as Humphrey Jennings’s Listen to Britain (1941) and Fires Were Started (1943) are among the finest films produced during the war—propaganda without rhetoric. The few celebratory films, Tunisian Victory (1943) and Burma Victory (1945), for example, both directed by the Army Kinematograph Unit, typically avoided the virulent propaganda of those of Nazi Germany.

Japan, immediately before and during World War II, Communist China, and Cuba after the revolution of 1959 similarly made use of films, alongside other methods of social control, to manage public opinion. Japan combined feature film with documentary techniques for such films as Kato Hyabusa Sentolai (The Falcon Fighters of General Kato, 1944); Cuba released some anti-American issues of Noticiero ICAIC, the weekly film magazine, in countries in which it might find sympathetic audiences; and the Chinese government has retained a tight control over its national image. As in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, widely disseminated newsreels in such countries demonize the enemy while praising the heroic efforts of their own workers, but they are rarely seen abroad. Feature films, however, which may be propaganda in a tightly controlled domestic market, may seem little more than heroic romances in a different political climate. The Cuban film Historias de la Revolución (1960; Stories of the Revolution), directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, for example, was widely admired abroad, but not for the same reasons as it was at home. In China, the government resolutely cut films that have been shown complete abroad. Bawang Bi Ji (1993; Farewell My Concubine), directed by Chen Kaige, which was filmed in Beijing, albeit with finance from Hong Kong, took the Palme d’Or at Cannes, but was cut for content on its mainland release. Ironically, Miramax, its distributor in the West, then cut it more heavily for commercial reasons.

During the Cold War, the United States, in particular, produced a number of extreme anti-Communist films, focusing the blame for both the Korean and Vietnam wars on Soviet policy. The anti-American sentiment, in France in particular, during the Vietnam campaign encouraged a fresh wave of film protest, notably from film-makers such as Alain Resnais, Claude Lelouch, Chris Marker, Ivens, and Agnès Varda, who jointly made Loin de Vietnam (1967; Far from Vietnam), but their films, like many documentaries, need to be distinguished from those of propagandists. Many films, for example, those from Poland by Jarosław Brzozowski, are critical of failures within the system but not of the system itself. In this respect, they are close to the British documentary films of the 1940s and are intended less to manipulate public opinion than to express a point of view within a wider debate.