Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Why We Fight notes

Frank Capra and “Why We Fight”

America’s greatest propaganda films?

Capra, an Italian immigrant…at first insecure and unhappy in America.

Later he became a famous Hollywood director making “Capraesque” films, musicals, escapist films, little man challenges the big shots…very popular stuff during the Depression of the 1930s (like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington)

War Dept and General Marshall needed to tell recruiters why we were fighting this war.

Decided to recruit Capra

Happy to serve, followed orders.

Proud of his work and received the Legion of Merit for it.

Pamphlets not enough, needed films.

Americans in 1917 had faith, and needed it again now.

Marshall was media savvy. Liked movies and knew the power of pictures in Life Magazine.

Signal Corps resented Capra. They had been making training films and did not want to release Nazi films to him.

Information Division houses Capra under Marshall, not in the Signal Corps.

8 officers and 35 enlisted men later total of 150.

$400,000 spent on Why We Fight, a fraction of War Department film budget

Capra wary of communist writers on his staff, but some of his footage you will see was sympathetic to our communist ally Russia and to the Reds fighting Japanese in China.

But Capra had to fill out reports on his writers and John Sanford was barred as a Red or premature anti-fascist, but later worked on The Battle of Russia.

Capra not politically involved. Wanted to win the war. Disliked Hollywood Reds.

Trouble during McCarthy era.

Capra had allowed some apologies for the Hitler-Stalin Pact into the series…did not want to undermine our ally Russia.

Made Russia sign the pact to buy time for the inevitable onslaught by the Nazis.

Capra was impressed by Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will. Nazi propaganda rally from 1934 scared Capra. He suppressed his earlier admiration for Mussolini common among Italian-Americans before the war.

Capra uses footage from the enemy in order to work against them. “Let their own films kill them”

Capra came up with the brilliant idea of destroying fascism by showing its own propaganda: arrogant, aggressive, crude, submissive, totalitarian…fanatic lunacy.

Contrasting this with his imagined America: religious, family oriented, tolerant, patriotic.

Series conceived in the summer of 1942…slavery vs. freedom and decency

Capra focuses blame on Nazis, not German people, but no so with the “Japs”

FDR : WAR FOR SURVIVAL

Films were simplistic, but powerful. Made for average GI, many of whom had never graduated from high school.

Why We Fight had seven parts: Prelude to War (which we’ve already watched), The Nazis Strike, The Battle of Russia, The Battle of Britain, The Battle of China, etc.

Capra produced the films and helped assemble the footage and rework the scripts.

Marshall and Stimson had to approve the films.

FDR meddled too.

Films made in Hollywood to be able to work without interference from Washington, at least somewhat.

Prelude to War won an Oscar in 1943

OWI (Office of War Information) war of showing the film in theaters: backlash claiming it was FDR reelection propaganda, and OWI had promised Hollywood that the government would not compete with its production.

Fear for budgets in Congress.

Postwar survey of GIs who had seen the films showed mixed reactions…some knowledge useful but some war of staged scenes and one-sided presentations, but War Department convinced of its value…millions saw them.

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