Posted on 02/11/2015 12:52:34 PM PST by Borges
Winston Churchill credited Mrs Miniver with increasing American support for the war effort. A new programme finds out how the domestic drama changed history.
“We will come. We will bomb your cities.” So bristles a character in the film Mrs Miniver. A German pilot who had been shot down in the chocolate box English village of Belham, he momentarily brings the horrors of World War II to what is largely a domestic drama.
The movie – released in June 1942, going on to win the best picture Oscar the following year – is credited with consolidating American support for the Allies, at a time when the public backed isolationism. A new programme explores the moment Hollywood finally took a stance against the Nazis, after years of underplaying opposition to the regime.
“The Hollywood business behaved shabbily and in a cowardly way,” film critic David Thomson tells presenter Paul Gambaccini. “Hollywood was caught in a very nasty situation – it did not want war for the simple reason that war would interfere with its European sales. And they played a very two-faced game, until it was clear that war was inevitable.”
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
We had recorded Mrs. Miniver last weekend on TCM and finally watched it last night; I was surprised to see this thread today! I saw this as a child of 10 or 11 when it was originally released—it has always been my favorite movie. My husband had never seen it. The black and white film only added to the drama even tho it didn’t show Greer Garson’s red hair and green eyes. I had goose bumps as the boat engines started. In those days the press was the 4th Estate, not the Fifth Column it is today.
Sort of.
There was, post Pearl Harbor, a big “Second Front” movement in the US that wanted a land invasion of Europe in 1942. But the focus seemed to be on beating back the Japanese, which the US public saw as the immediate threat despite the “Hitler First” policy of FDR.
That movement claimed success with Torch (invasion of North Africa). I’m guessing that this author is trying to (incorrectly) tie this film to those (falsely credited IMHO) claims of success.
But it really is a false claim. The US had the forces to do Torch, and the Army needed quick experience in both amphibious assault and interoperability with the Brits (the Marines did the same in the Pacific by leading the Guadalcanal invasion). North Africa was a less risky place than Continental Europe to do this. Even without the “pressure” of Second Front, it still would have happened when it did.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_propaganda_during_World_War_II
Scroll to movie section. According to wiki, Mrs. Miniver “was rushed to the theaters on Roosevelt’s orders.”
save for later
A lot of Hollywood didn’t want war because the the Commie writers of Hollywood were still slavishly following the Hitler/Stalin pact. That began to fray when the Nazis attacked the erstwhile ally on June 22, 1941. The Hollywood commies followed Stalin again to go to war and Hollywood followed suit.
Charlie Chaplin had to finance "The Great Dictator" mostly from his own pocket. Also, his Jewish girlfriend, Paulette Goddard, and his half Jewish half brother, business manager Sidney Chaplain, also influenced him in the making of that picture. Moses Horowitz (Moe Howard, leader of the Three Stooges) was good Jew and non Communist. He had an almost personal reason to mock Hitler.
Warner Brothers was anti-nazi after a jewish friend and studio worker was kicked to death in the streets of Berlin before the war. Movies have power—The Soviets knew this—so did the Nazis (Look at Triump of the Will or Battleship Potempkin). We need a new movie to show the horror of IS and the Moslem brotherhood. Maybe a movie about the plight of Christians in the Middle East? I have long thought the Tea Party/Conservatives need their own studios to make the movies needed. Film making is becomeing cheaper each day—we have conservative stars to play the roles—Now all we need is the scripts and the will. How about a movie called “Coptic” about Egypt—Heck we might be able to get permission to shoot in Egypt. Maybe film in Russia a movie called “Belsan” about that horror where children were murdered.
It wasn’t the non aggression pact that made Hollywood do like they did. That was only signed about a week before Germany invaded Poland.
The truth is that nobody really predicted in the 30s the kind of war that was about to happen. The world was still digesting WWI about 20 years earlier. Think of today and imagine we had a nuclear war in 1995. You would refuse to believe that the same and worse was about to happen again.
Lindberg was touring their bases and saying nice things.
The British leader called him “Herr Hitler” respectfully.
The last Olympics anyone remembered had happened there and went well.
Its hard to blame Hollywood for this. And when the war began, the movies began to support the Brits before we were involved. “49th Parallel” came out. “Mortal Storm” came out.
Hollywood came in line about the time the world did if you really look at it much.
The Three Stooges had them all beat in 1940 with You Nazty Spy. Moe is even swearing his brains out in Yiddish and the Censors didn’t catch it because they didn’t screen shorts.
“Hail, hail, Hailstone! Wha-hoo!”
Bttt
No, it isn’t nonsense. I was specifically referring to Hollywood writers, who were under pressure to not write ant-Nazi material during the Soviet-Nazi entente. What does a Soviet film like Nevsky have to do with Hollywood anyway? And Chaplin was an independent filmmaker who could make what he wanted. I am quite familiar with the two films you cited.
Pearl Harbor was December, 1941. America wasn't very isolationist after that.The movie – released in June 1942, going on to win the best picture Oscar the following year – is credited with consolidating American support for the Allies, at a time when the public backed isolationism.
. . . but it was plenty isolationist before that.
is quite instructive. An “embarrassing” leak of a Pentagon plan for heavy fighting in Europe and the Pacific caused a furor, with peace demonstrations going on even as reports of the attack on Pearl Harbor came in. So the peaceniks - which was practically everybody - got mouse-trapped. The author of the book suggests that that “leak” was actually an intentional plant.
- The New Dealers' War:
- FDR and the War Within World War II
by Thomas FlemingAfter PH, the politicians who had opposed entry into WWII switched along with their constituents - and FDR tried to sell the idea that those politicians should be defeated for having agreed with their constituents before PH. It didn’t work.
I remember watching the movie DIVE BOMBER. I thought it was interesting that every time the two lead stars stopped to have a conversation they would light up.
I clearly remember the old smokey days, at home, at work, at the cafeteria, at the hospital waiting rooms, doctor’s offices, on the movie screen.
Cultures and human behavior are quite malleable, the smoking rates plotted across the 20th Century a case in point.
‘Man Hunt’ was another film made before the invasion of the U.S.S.R. that was strongly anti-Nazi. In any case there were enough of those sorts of films.
Never heard of it.
Well worth seeing. Made by German jewish refugee Fritz Lang.
Now there’s a great director. Ernst Lubitsch (sp) was also Jewish and attended some Communist fronts, but he did not have the much attraction toward Communism.
Lubitsch was great. His best films don’t strike me as overtly political. Except maybe ‘To Be Or Not to Be’ the great anti Nazi satire which was in mid production when Pearl Harbor happened.
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