Propaganda
From a social perspective, this part looks into the history of film to find out when and how it began to be applied for propaganda. We will dive into the propaganda history of films with some real examples.
At the turn of the 20th century, films emerged as the new popular medium to introduce events from remote corners of the world to mass audiences in the urban areas of Europe and the United State.
By using projectors to move the celluloid frames in an order with a certain speed and add up the sound, film becomes a powerful form of communication because it can represent a distinct life in such a vivid and effective way. The Independența României (1912) is the first fictional film in the world with a deliberate political message.
Independența României
"For a film made in 1911, this chronicle of the 1877 war of Romania and Russia against the Turkish which led to Romania's independence is crude and primitive; but for a film from a country with little film history at the time, it is a monumental achievement."
IMDb member, JoeytheBrit
Furthermore, film proves that what our eyes perceive as continuous is in fact an accumulation of individual images. As a result, we can change the order of a series of short shots to condense space, time and information, thus creating a montage.
Battleship Potemkin (1925) is a Soviet silent film directed by Sergei Eisenstein, which dramatically presents the mutiny led by the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin in 1905. When it comes to montage, you can never avoid this movie.
Here are the clips taken from the iconic scene of the Odessa Stairs, showing a baby in a carriage falling down the stairs helplessly after the mother is shot to death by the troops. The fact that the massacre happened elsewhere other than the Odessa Steps may not decrease the power of the scene.
The 1930s and 1940s are arguably the "Golden Age of Propaganda" because of the Second World War. The most extreme example of the film in the service of political purposes is the Nazi control of the German film industry, such as the notorious Triumph of the Will (1935).
On the other side, films also provided a forceful voice for independent critics of contemporary events. The Great Dictator (1940) was the first true sound film of Charlie Chaplin, which later became his most commercially successful film. At the film’s conclusion, the protagonist gives an impassioned speech that has become one of the most famous in film history.
“
Our knowledge has made us cynincal
Our cleverness, hard and unkind
We think too much, and feel too little
More than machinery, we need humanity
More that cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness
Without these qualities life will be violent, and all will be lost
”
References
1. Stern, F. (2000). Screening politics: cinema and intervention. Geo. J. Int'l Aff., 1, 65.
2. Bottomore, S. (2007). Filming, faking and propaganda: The origins of the war film, 1897-1902 (Doctoral dissertation, Utrecht University).
3. Kendrick, J. (2010). Film violence: history, ideology, genre. Columbia University Press.
4. Documentary and propaganda. (n.d.). Retrieved May 4, 2021, from https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/film/documentary-and-propaganda/
5. Roger, E. (1998, July 19). The Battleship Potemkin. RogerEbert. Retrieved May 4, 2021, from https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-battleship-potemkin-1925