Historically, in the time of crisis and uncertainty, when the injustice intensified and the walls were closing, the audience may be hopeful that Hollywood’s production would grow to say something to get up on the occasion. You can criticize the results, but at least it was felt that someone was forced to make a effort somewhere, and the support of the officers in charge was (sideways or otherwise).
This is a different scenario today. Script writers and filmmakers may be shamping on the bit behind the curtain, but major media companies producing TV and film wholesale of the film seem uninterrupted in anything, which can be considered as (panting) vaccine,
Hollywood may be more inclined to tell such stories when the totalitarian threats were mainly outsiders, rather than entering it. Nevertheless, the exceptions ignored by contemporary mainstream entertainment, including the imprisonment of Japanese Americans, have always been ignored after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Getting that kind of up and choosing is more specific than ever. Anonymous online anecdotes should be taken with a grain of salt, but sometimes they have a ring of truth, including it that I came recently: “A friend of mine has just picked some pitch in just one studio He and the executive said, “It is very good, but no one is buying anything with an attitude.”
Where we are without a story, which portrays the worst people in the world around us, but it reminds us that we are not powerless in front of evergreen doom?
This question is returning to me in old films. Comedy all I can stomach at this time and it is attractive to see, even in the early years of World War II, filmmakers threaded the needle.
Charlie Chaplin “Great dictator” There is a clear touchstone of the era since 1940. Two years later, and a few months after America entered the war, United Artist releases “Yes or no” In 1942, Carol Lombard and Jack Beni starred as stage actors in Poland, beating the Nazis. It is also a comedy. (Both films are available to stream at the maximum.)
Chaplin played a dual role in his film, both as a fictional Hitler-Aasac character and a Jewish hairdresser who looks like a whole like him.
I saw it again after watching lazy Kate Winslet HBO series “The Regim”, which draws a climk inspiration from the film’s film, but lacks a powerful end. In contrast, “The Great Dictator” in its final moments some risky – honesty – and Chaplin gives a speech, which identifies rot in the center of all this: “Greed has poisoned men’s souls. (And) the world with hatred.
For some people, that honesty is a boomer and a fatal defect of the film. I hate this interpretation because after 85 years, the speech still applies directly to our lives, and it is a better and optimistic rally that cries to do something better. I do not remember that last time Hollywood gave us a complete strangulation of atrocities that were not hidden behind a smile.
In his autobiography, Chaplin wrote that he knew the horrific to the extent, he would not have done the film at all. “I could not make fun of the rituals of the Nazis.” But in the end the speech is fine why the film works, because it understands that Mockery is not an endgeam.
“Be or not” takes us through the Polish theater company equally uncertain conditions.
The congregation often performs Shakespeare and Shock’s speech from “The Merchant of Venice”, which is referred to three times during the film. Talk about underlining a point: “A Jewish hand, limbs, dimensions, affection, not passion? … If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you give us poison then we will not die? “Also, there is” Hamlet “on the bill, and its famous speech not only gives the film title, but also becomes an important code phrase. But there is a new drama What they are also working, called “guestopo”, which knows about you.
The film is directed by Ernst Lubitsch, who wrote a script with Edwin Justice Mayor, who was adopting a story of all three Jews – Melchier Langilel. According to the film critic and essayist Brian Agart, “When it was released, many people believed that the film had explained its subject in good taste very soon; Lubits were accused of treating forbidden materials, although it was prime for a price for the Nazis’ sevagari to be fulfilled with the slap and bizarre. … And yet, as Jewish artists, Lubitust and Script Writer Edwin Justus Mayor knew his subject very well, sufficient to suggest that he did not increase this unimaginable subject without naive or without reflection. “The project was also a final role of Lombard; she died in a plane crash months before release in theaters.
The first 10 minutes of the film are an extended gag – and perhaps the most fun section of the film – but they install the settings and outlines the power of the actors in their roles. This is August 1939. Set a voiceover scene:
“At the moment, life in Warsaw is normally as usual. But suddenly something seems to be. “Everyone stops staring at the crowd as a notorious figure. “Adolf Hitler in Warsaw He is a vegetarian! And still, he does not always cling to his diet – sometimes he wants to eat Poland? ”
Cut for a new view. Führer enters a room and everyone says “Heil Hitler!” To which he answers “himself.” Before he could say more, he is interrupted: “It’s not in the script!” It turns out, we are watching the artists doing rehearsal of “guestopo”.
The actor, who played Hitler (Tom Dugan), defended his advertising-live line: “But it will be a laugh!” There is no improvement, he said. Would you like my opinion, another actor intervenes? No, the manufacturer says. “Okay, so I give you my feedback: a laugh is nothing but sneezing.”
Used to sing film dialogues! I realize how much I miss the fun Wordplay.
The manufacturer also says that the style is unrelated. The actor is anger in the question: “I am no one and I have to take a lot, but I know I look like Hitler and I am going to prove it right now! I am going on the road and seeing what happens! ,
“And how Adolf Hitler came to Warsaw in August 1939,” concluded the voiceover.
But after a long time, Germans arrive for real with their bombs, leveling Warsaw – “destroyed for destruction,” as our unseen narrator puts it – and the attack begins. This is when the theater troupe comes with a plan.
For months, Lombard’s character is playing a dangerous game entertaining a young pilot (a dashing Robert Stack), but the irony is that delians are using; This reveals a double agent that intends to highlight the polish resistance. Suddenly all those realistic costumes are kept for a separate use for “gestopo” and the theater company’s stars (Lombard and Beni) find themselves getting stuck in an uncertain position one after the other, completely subtouted on their part Need – or as they call it in their day’s jobs, acting.
At one point, a German officer chats with his detective (or who is he Thinks He is a detective, it is actually the main person of Beni. What news do you bring from London? “Colonel, you are quite famous in London,” the answer comes. “You know what they say to you?” Concentration Camp Eharhart. “Colonel laughs and laughs and laughs. He is just tickling. You want to smack the smile from his face.
Here is described how Agart puts up: Lubitsch wanted to emphasize that “Nazis were not supernatural demons that so many cinematic representatives excluded them. Instead, they were pre -rated and seduced humans, And whoever chose to follow ridiculous figures like Hitler was equally disabled.
However, Nazis were foolish and not hate, though.
The strength of the film is that this theater puts strategies at the center to plot the company and separate the Nazis. OBFUSCATION and Trici are essential and effective strategies. The actors are giving their lives performance. (It does not hurt when the other side wears uniforms that are easily repeated by the theater folk.)
On HBO, “The Rahim” was only interested in a void satire of the winslet’s anti -fascist hero. It is a myopic story tool that fails to complete the moment because it boils down: we are cooking. “Be or not” tells a different story, ease and what it looks to fight back, even if you are not usually in a state of impact or authority. More than bravery is more than a match, you believe in some narratives.
When the troupe escapes in the UK and goes to the ground in Scotland, a journalist informed Beni’s character that he was a hero.
“I performed my best and was very supported by my colleagues,” Thisian, pointing politely to the people around me. “Thank you, my friend, for what you did” – they all appreciate and appreciate – “the less it is.” Ensure multiple side-toes.
Once a spotlight-loving actor, always a spotlight-love actor.