Capitalism - Feudalism without the Kings

Tax the Rich

Movie Monday - On Propaganda

I lost everything I typed! I meant to check another site for information and I clicked this site and just "moved on"; that is, a blank posting screen appeared and all my previous golden words were lost.

Oh well.

I came to this Monday with very little until 2 am this morning when I caught the opening credits of the TCM Sunday foreign movie pick. It was Titanic, the 1943 German version which Goebbels approved with a big budget but then forbade German distribution because he felt the destruction of the Titanic too depressing for a German populace which was being subjected to allied bombings.

The Titanic is only the McGuffin for this interesting piece of anti-British, anti-capitalism screed but it's still a very well-done movie with much better plot points than Cameron's 1997 touted opus. Technically and thematically, the Germans made a tight, well-flowing movie. Their propaganda is "in your face." The capitalists, the rich, the British are really bad mothers in this movie and the only good rich woman becomes so after she loses all her money. What's unusual is that the director (the first director was removed from the film for anti-German navy remarks and found hanged in his cell) was able to do this without making the rich into stick figures. It's obvious that you're supposed to hate them but the skill here is keeping them from falling into the mustache-twirling villains of the silents. You get your love interest, your stock manipulation, your steerage class strum and drang but there's none of the wallowing syrup found in the 1997 American version.

If the propaganda is heavy-handed in the German Titanic, just 15 years later you get a more subtle propaganda in another well-made Titanic movie; this time the British version, A Night To Remember. Here, the put-down of the rich is in the undercurrent such as an early scene where all the children from the work house stand outside the manor house and wave on the lord and lady as they leave for the voyage. One servant riding on the top of their carriage says to another: They want to be sure of their Christmas turkey. It's a throw away scene, but the message is there.

Once on board the ship, the emphasis of each movie is very different. The German version spends time on the desire for speed in order to break records and bring profit, and a sub-theme of manipulating Titanic stock; the English version spends its time on the the sinking and the "evil rich" theme is buried. (Though in both movies, Bruce Ismay, the White Star line chairman, is a villain.)

Which brings me back to propaganda: in-your-face vs. subtle. After seeing both movies, I have to say that the former is much more effective. A Night To Remember may take the more sophisticated approach to the manipulation of feelings but the German Titanic leaves no room for doubt of feelings. If you're going in for propaganda you really have to use what works.

However, because the Germans used such a broad brush in their movie, their ending has Ismay exonerated by the Titanic disaster inquiries. That may be factually true, but Ismay became society's piranha (Edit: Of course, I mean pariah though piranha is a nice touch.) and lived the rest of his life in obscurity. Unlike today when as the journalist, Mikael Blomkvist says in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: Bad behavior is rewarded.; "good form" mattered in 1912 among certain classes. Ironically, Ismay's reputation may have been saved if he had died on the Titanic.

It probably won't be easy to get a copy of the 1943 German Titanic but it's a very suitable addition to the WWII film propaganda mill and should be seen for that reason.