Wolverines!
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.
Yes...
That was a lifetime honor to director Elia Kazan. Kazan testified against the other communist traitors hiding within the Hollywood establishment.
I have always considered Kazan’s film “On The Waterfront” to be an analogy of his lonely stand against communism in Hollywood...
I saw “Goodbye, Lenin!” recently and thought it was an excellent film and very funny, but I don’t think it can be categorized as “anti-Communist” (is “Rip Van Winkle” anti-British?).
Yes...
That was a lifetime honor to director Elia Kazan. Kazan testified against the other communist traitors hiding within the Hollywood establishment.
I have always considered Kazan’s film “On The Waterfront” to be an analogy of his lonely stand against communism in Hollywood...
A remake of that movie starring a dead Ernie "Che" Guevarra would be hilarious.. The skits with certain hollywood stars (and polilitians) would be pregnant with meaning and humor..
Even BETTER, Could make a buttload of money too..
Did you miss the MTV-like music video of the Revolution, with Reed and Bryant holding hands and marching with the Proles while Internationale proudly plays on the soundtrack? The movie made it appear that Reed objected to his writings being tampered with, but as far as I remember, he was never shown to have fallen away from communism. He's buried in the Kremlin, after all.
I found the film to be totally pro-commie (and boring).
Also, Hollywood honored Beatty with Best Director as I recall. It probably almost didn't get made because it's not a commercial property. Remember-Hollywood is full of commies, but they are also capitalists when it comes to box-office.
Yes...
That was a lifetime honor to director Elia Kazan. Kazan testified against the other communist traitors hiding within the Hollywood establishment.
I have always considered Kazan’s film “On The Waterfront” to be an analogy of his lonely stand against communism in Hollywood...
Thanks, I couldn’t remember Kazan’s name. What some of those lesser talents, like Harris and that idiot Busey did was shameful.
Guilty and shame?
These ‘stars’ are guilty they have so much, yet they don’t realize the ‘sacrifice’ the Marxists would ask of them.
Harry Bellefonte should sell his mansion first and set a good example of Socialism...
That’s exactly why it almost didn’t get made. But Beatty’s goal was too make a film examining the roots of modern American radcialism in the early 20th century intellectual circles from where it sprang. How those people were hoodwinked by corrupt party bosses. The montage you describe is subjective. It’s from the point of view of Reed and Bryant who were smitten with the idea of revolution. Reed didn’t have much time to turn against the Soviet communists as he died before the Russian Civil War ended.
May I suggest Red Dawn?
The opening sequence of “We were soldiers”
“The Killing Fields”
“Enemy at the gates” highlights some of the hypocrisy and conflicts, and brutality inherent within the Stalinesque house of cards.
Magnificent!
Rather than selling his mansion, perhaps he should invite a few dozen street people in to live with him, and provide them with all the food, alcohol and drugs they “need,” sharing the wealth so to speak. Doesn’t the saying go, “To each according to his need”?
Of course...Red Dawn is a favorite.
I think the point of the article is to show that while there have been some anti-communist films made in Hollywood (and these tend to be independent and self financed), the leftist intelligencia that runs Hollywood will in a knee-jerk like manner, cast as villians; right wingers, conservatives, priests and the clergy, capitalists and nazis (and yes, the nazis were very bad.)
However, Hollywood seems to have a difficult time casting commies as the villians, and when they do, it is seen as an anomaly.
The same can also be said right now about Hollywood’s reluctance in casting Islamic nutjobs as villians in movies too.
The Weekly Standard recently had a review of a new German movie about a Stasi agent during the communist era who undergoes a change of heart. They raved about it-but I can’t remember what it was called.
Kazan made another movie explicitly about communist tyranny in eastern Europe, called MAN ON A TIGHTROPE, starring Fredric March as a Czech circus owner who masterminds his troupe’s escape to the west. It holds up pretty well. I WAS A COMMUNIST FOR THE FBI, with Frank Lovejoy, is also pretty good.
See Post 3.
I found this bit of Wiki trivia:
"During filming, Beatty lectured his Russian extras on the capitalist exploitation of labour, attempting to inspire them. According to the magazine Total Film in 2004, this was the 4th "dumbest decision in movie history": the extras duly went on strike, demanding higher wages."
If this story is true, it would seem that Beatty had the typical Hollywood-idealized view of communism, and I would think that Beatty and Keaton were as "smitten" as Reed and Bryant.
Certainly one could see the movie as nothing more than a romance set against the background of the Russian Revolution, but I never saw the film as being particularly critical of the commies. The revolution seemed to be part of the romance. If Beatty worked that long on a movie about Reed it was not to make any sort of anti-communist movie. Reed's quarrels with the Comintern seemed more based on the fact that his branch of communism was not to be the "official" party in America, so his disillusionment seemed to be based more on personal rejection than any cooling of communist ardor. Had he lived, he might have exposed the Russian leaders (Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin) as the brutal murderers they were, but he didn't.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.