CinemaSerf

Now I’ve seem some rousingly patriotic propaganda from both sides of the Atlantic, but this has to be the most akin to a party political broadcast. From the mouth of US Vice-President Wallace, we hear a speech that is clearly intended to galvanise a free world to face the war, without remotely recognising that a great deal of the free world had already been fighting it for some years! Then there is the briefest of stories about three men in a boat, but quite what happened to them after they landed on a remote desert island isn’t explained. Finally, he starts quoting bible verses about empowering the faint and the weak which does seem to be somewhat incongruous as we look at scenes of Jewish persecution or Japanese intervention in an Asia that was only ever Christian in the first place because the Western powers imposed it on the population. It’s an address proclaiming how “we” must all pull together, about how “we” must strive to improve production through extra effort, owning farmland, building aircraft. Essentially it’s a lecture on the necessities of industriousness delivered in a the most sterile fashion and isn’t really a film at all.