An interesting Tim Noah piece which touches on the misunderstood historical context of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington - a film that I have always been earnestly implored to love, but which, to be perfectly honest, I find both hokey and boring (mind you, if you really want to see Capra go off the deep end, check this out some time).
Posted by Alan Allport at May 24, 2005 05:59 PMWhether Mr. Smith is hokey or not (and it is, but a pretty good hokey), and whether we've misunderstood its historical context, seems beside the point. The problem lies in the American inclination to take its cues for living from the movies.
Posted by: Bobby Farouk at May 25, 2005 05:56 AMI was under the impression Capra's 'rehabilition' came when Queer Theory got hold of him: I'm sure someone wrote a doorstop tome, probably for Fabers, with that running through it; you know, like the Queer Theorists who always got too much much space in Sight and Sound years ago to explore elements of transvestisism and homoeroticism in Errol Flynn and Claude Rains' relationship in The Adventures of Robin Hood (Rains was actually aping Jane Wyman IIRC), and how it's just *obvious* my dear that Rock Hudson is advertising his gayness in 'Tobruk'.
Now Cukor, yes; in the same way that you can see that Sex and The City is as gay as a row of tents.
I've never seen Know Your Enemy — Japan, but last year I did go on a WW2 propaganda spree that culminated in me buying Why We Fight.
Why We Fight was a lot better than I was expecting. One of the most surprising things about watching it shortly after seeing Triumph of the Will was how Capra uses clips from Riefenstahl without any distortion at all. The vision of Nazi Germany Riefenstahl paints — regimented, fanatical, Führer-worshiping and child-indoctrinating is so unappealing that he can just lift some of the most powerful images without comment.
The biggest lie in Why We Fight was its handling of the Hitler-Stalin pact. The German advance into Poland was "stopped by the Soviets." I guess that's one way to describe carving up Poland. The only reference to the pact is a veiled phrase about Stalin "buying time for the USSR to arm itself."
The series didn't play the race/YP card as much as I expected -- probably in part because they spent a lot of time touting the Chinese resistance.
Posted by: Ben Brumfield at May 25, 2005 08:26 AMThe Battle for China is by far the worst of the WWF series, partly because of its use of a number of extremely dubious racial and national stereotypes, and partly because it relies on the smoking gun of the so-called Tanaka Memorandum, which is now known to be a forgery crafted by Chinese or Soviet intelligence.
Some of the Battle for Russia is also, to say the least, equivocal about Stalin's pre-1941 behavior.
Posted by: Alan Allport at May 25, 2005 10:01 AM