Posted on 05/02/2007 11:47:26 AM PDT by DogByte6RER
Where Are the Anti-Communist Movies?
By David Boaz: May 2, 2007
The new movie The Wind That Shakes the Barley, about the Irish struggle for independence in the early 1920s, has beautiful Irish cinematography and effectively shows us the poverty of Ireland, the commitment of the rebels, the conflicts inevitable in any political movement, and the brutality of the British occupiers. Critics complain it goes overboard on that last point. Michael Gove protested in the Times of London that it portrays the British Black and Tans as "sub-human mercenaries burning thatched cottages, torturing by using pliers to rip out toenails [actually fingernails] and committing extreme violence against women." It's not the first movie to be criticized for making the British out to be more brutal than they actually were. Mel Gibson's The Patriot depicted the British army herding all the residents of a town into a church and then setting it on fire. Never happened, historians say.
But hey, the British Empire committed plenty of crimes over the centuries, so I'm not so upset that the Australian right-winger Mel Gibson and the English left-winger Ken Loach may have overreached on the details. What I'm wondering about is, Where are the films depicting Communist atrocities?
Anti-Nazi movies keep coming out, from Confessions of a Nazi Spy and Hitler, Beast of Berlin in 1939 and on through The Great Dictator, The Mortal Storm, The Diary of Anne Frank, Sophie's Choice, Schindler's List, right up to the current Black Book. And many of these have included searing depictions of Nazi brutality, both physical and psychological.
But where are the anti-communist movies? Oh, sure, there have been some, from early Cold War propaganda films to such artistic achievements as The Red Danube, Ninotchka, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The Killing Fields, East-West, and Before Night Falls. But considering that National Socialism lasted only 12 years in one country (and those it occupied), and Communism spanned half the globe for 75 years, you'd think there'd be lots more stories to tell about Communist rule.
No atrocities, maybe? Nazis and Brits were vicious, but Communists were just intellectually misguided? Well, that seems implausible. They murdered several times as many people. If screenwriters don't know the stories, they could start with the Black Book of Communism. It could introduce them to such episodes as Stalin's terror-famine in Ukraine, the Gulag, the deportation of the Kulaks, the Katyn Forest massacre, Mao's Cultural Revolution, the Hungarian revolution, Che Guevara's executions in Havana, the flight of the boat people from Vietnam, Pol Pot's mass slaughter—material enough for dozens of movies.
Lloyd Billingsley wrote about the great stories, the great villains, and the great books that might inspire movies about Communism:
"Though of global dimension, the conflict encompasses millions of dramatic personal stories played out on a grand tapestry of history: courageous Solidarity unionists against a Communist military junta; teenagers facing down tanks in the streets of Budapest and Prague; Cuban gays oppressed by a macho-Marxist dictatorship; writers and artists resisting the kitsch of obscurantist materialism; families fleeing brutal persecution, risking their lives to find freedom.
"Furthermore, great villains make for great drama, and communism's central casting department is crowded: Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hönecker, Ceaucescu, Pol Pot, Col. Mengistu--all of cosmic megalomania--along with their squads of hacks, sycophants, and stooges, foreign and domestic.
"A few English-language films have drawn on this remarkable material, especially book-into-film projects based on highly publicized works, among them One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (a 1971 British-Norwegian production) and, of course, Doctor Zhivago (1965). But many other natural book-to-film projects remain untouched, from the story of Stalin's daughter Svetlana (who left Russia for the West) to works by such high-ranking defectors as Polish Ambassador Romuald Spasowski (The Liberation of One), KGB agent Arkady Schevchenko (Breaking With Moscow), and persecuted Cuban poets Armando Valladares (Against All Hope) and Heberto Padilla (Heroes Are Grazing in My Garden). In light of the most recent revelations concerning the espionage of Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers' Witness is another obvious candidate."
Some might say that the Soviet Union is no more, this is ancient history, and we should let bygones be bygones. But Ken Loach's new movie depicts events of the 1920s, and the Nazi regime fell in 1945. The Soviet Union continued until 1991, and communism continues in Cuba, China, and Vietnam. Besides, as the great historian Lord Acton knew, the historian must be a moral judge. The muse of the historian, he thought (in the words of his colleague John Neville Figgis), is not Clio, but Rhadamanthus, the avenger of innocent blood. The victims of communism, and its heroic resisters, deserve to have their stories remembered.
David Boaz is executive vice president of the Cato Institute and author of Libertarianism: A Primer.
The simple truth is that Hollywood and the MSM is STILL infested with communists, neo-Marxists and other elite leftist totalitarians.
With the exception of very few actors, directors and writers (Andy Garcia and his film "The Lost City" comes to mind; so does op-ed columnist Burt Prelutsky) the Hollywood left to this day still likes to portray themselves as martyrs for the so called "blacklisting" that occured during the 1950s with the HUAC hearings in Congress.
To this day, Hollywood still cannot muster up the shame, remorse, reflection and apologies for an ideology that is directly responsible for the torture and murder and forced starvation of 100 million. Liberal Hollywood shares in the culpability for the rivers of blood created by Karl Marx and his disciples.
It’s not from Hollywood, but Andrzej Wajda has just finished directing a movie about the Katyn massacre.
The “Inner Circle” was another good anti-communist movie, depicting how brainwashed the Soviet Union was under Stalin.
Also “Goodbye Lenin!” was an excellent film.
The original Manchurian Candidate.
ie: Sinatra, Angela Landbury, et al.
“To this day, Hollywood still cannot muster up the shame, remorse, reflection and apologies for an ideology that is directly responsible for the torture and murder and forced starvation of 100 million. Liberal Hollywood shares in the culpability for the rivers of blood created by Karl Marx and his disciples.”
Thats like expecting a bear to be ‘ashamed’ it crapped in the woods, friend.
Witness what happened at the Academy Award a few years ago, when a man who provided names of communist sympathizers during the McCarthy ‘era’ was honored, and idiots like Gary Busey and Ed Harris ‘protested’.
Hollywood thinks Capitalism is/was a bigger ‘evil’ than Communism. Thats why today they hide behind the so called ‘enviromental movement’ which is the place old communists go to die these days. Its not by chance Earth Day is on the date its on.....
ie: Sinatra, Angela Landsbury, et al.
The McCarthy character didn’t kill anybody.
The Academy as a whole chooses to honor Elia Kazan and you think that a couple of people in the audience are more representative of the sentiments at play?
>>>“To this day, Hollywood still cannot muster up the shame, remorse, reflection and apologies for an ideology that is directly responsible for the torture and murder and forced starvation of 100 million. Liberal Hollywood shares in the culpability for the rivers of blood created by Karl Marx and his disciples.”
Hollywood does not honor the 10 Commandments.
Hollywood honors the Golden Calf.”
-Ben Stein
Hollywood is pro-communist, anti-American and intellectually bankrupt, with only a few notable exceptions. I won’t go into Hollywood’s moral code, except to say that it is written on a small square of toilet paper. Hollywood is disappointed that we won the Cold War, and hasn’t realized yet that if the Red Menace takes over, they would be among the first in line for the Gulags. Hollywood is convinced that if the communists took over, Hollywood would be part of the nomenclatura and exempt from the economic disasters experienced by the proles, (see Cuba). Power-mad and greedy. Hollywood is one of the most capitalistic sectors of our economy, but doesn’t believe in capitalism and prefers socialism. This is why I don’t go to many movies, and get my DVDs from the library.
A recent one that showd a bit of the horror of Mao's China was The Red Violin. I also liked Sam Fuller's Pickup on South Street from the 50's, a classic film noir.
Lost City is the last movie I actually paid to see.
Ben Stein understands it all too well.
Most Communist societies seem to have been run by gangs of corrupt, ruthless, egomaniacal elites who lived in relative splendor while force-feeding ideology to impoverished and powerless masses. Communist leaders live(d) a priveleged life removed from the realities faced by most people, and and were not accountable to the people they ruled. If this isn’t the dream of many in Hollywood, I don’t know what is.
Reds was a Valentine to Communism? It showed the Soviet communists to be self absorbed back stabbers. As for it being a Hollywood valentine, it barely got made. That’s why Beatty was too old to play Reed. No studio wanted to make it for years.
John Milius is great.
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