☆ ☆ ☆ ½
It
Happened Here (1965) – K. Brownlow & A. Mollo
Imagine Britain if Hitler and the Nazis
had succeeded in their invasion plans.
How would the nation respond?
Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo’s low budget project (scripted when they
were teenagers and shot in 16mm with film stock provided by Kubrick among
others) presents a nation divided among the resistance (partisans) and the
collaborators, a nation now at war with itself as well as with the Nazis. As a case study, the narrative follows
Pauline, a nurse who sees her friends killed by an attack by the resistance
while she is being relocated to London by the Germans. As a reaction, she joins
the black shirted collaborators who spruik law and order -- and the elimination
of dissidents and those who cannot contribute to society. A terrifying speech by an actual British
National Socialist was removed by the censors back in the 1960s but has since
been replaced, advocating euthanasia for the undesirables. While following Pauline’s movements, the camera
happens to pass a Jewish ghetto behind barbed wire (no stock footage was used,
all events were restaged with amateur actors and authentic or makeshift props). Later, after she fails to report former
friends who have sheltered an injured partisan, Pauline is transferred to a
sanitorium for TB patients that in reality is the last way station for those
about to be executed by the state (i.e., Jews and others rejected by the
Nazis). Obviously, the resulting film is
chilling and politically relevant today – how would our neighbours respond to a
totalitarian takeover? Would they give
in? Would they resist? Would they actively support the new regime? When they come for your neighbour what would
you do? Sobering stuff.
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