Abstract
This chapter’s first section, Good Russians and Anti-fascists, explores the rise and fall of cinematic heroes with anti-fascist and anti-isolationist credentials. These were often acquired in the Spanish Civil War, as in Roberto Rossellini’s Rome: Open City (1945), Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca (1942) and war propaganda films. By the war’s end, ‘Good Russians’ were replaced by civilian resisters, whose transition is investigated in the chapter’s second section, Monuments and Martyrs, with reference to Andrej Wajda’s war trilogy, Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped (1956) and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows (1969). This monumentalizing embraces female SOE agents in Herbert Wilcox’s Odette (1950) and Lewis Gilbert’s Carve Her Name with Pride (1958), while is parodied in Jiří Menzel’s Closely Watched Trains (1966).
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Notes
- 1.
The film deals with a group of men who have fought in Spain and who, after spending two years in a French internment camp, are sent by the Vichy Government to build a railway in the Sahara.
- 2.
I have studied Rome as a ‘foundational narrative ’ in ‘Foundational Films: The Memorialization of Resistance in Italy , France , Belarus and Yugoslavia’ in Film, History and Public Memory: New Perspectives, ed. by Jenny Carlsten and Fearghal MacGarry (London: Palgrave), pp. 83–100.
- 3.
Rousso , Vichy Syndrome , p. 10.
- 4.
The organization was set up by Hugh Dalton, then Minister of Economic Warfare, on 22 July 1940, and was often referred to as ‘Churchill’s Secret Army’.
- 5.
The other two films are Jack Lee’s A Town Called Alice (1956) and Ralph Thomas’ Conspiracy of Hearts (1960). These four films are analysed by Penny Summerfield in ‘Public Memory or Public Amnesia? British Women of the Second World War in Popular films of the 1950s and 1960s’. The Journal of British Studies, 48 (2009), 935–57. Summerfield notes that women not only do not appear as the main protagonists, but more often than not do not appear at all.
- 6.
Bennett, ‘The Celluloid War: State and Studio in Anglo-American Propaganda Film-Making, 1939–1941’. The International History Review, 24.1 (2002), 64–102 (p. 102)
- 7.
Quoted in Valerie Grove and Jan Struther, Mrs Miniver (London: Virago, 1989), p. xi. Bennett considers the effect of Mrs Miniver on Boston cinemagoers who had more ‘favourable views of Britain’ than those who had not seen the film. See ‘The Celluloid War’, p. 95.
- 8.
The Spanish coalition lasted from February 1936, which is only four months before the military uprising of 18 July 1936, until April 1939, while the French Popular Front , led by Léon Blum, was ousted after one year in power, in June 1937.
- 9.
See Eric Hobsbawm , Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991 (London: Penguin, 1994), p. 37.
- 10.
Although normally referred to as Brigade, the group was, in fact, a battalion of just over 3000 men, 600 of whom died in Spain .
- 11.
Peter Carroll, ‘Ernest Hemingway, Screenwriter: New Letters on for Whom the Bell Tolls’. The Antioch Review, 53.3 (1995), 261–83.
- 12.
Armstrong, ‘We’ll Always Have Paris: History and Memory in Casablanca’. Screen Education, 47 (2007), 133–39 (p. 134).
- 13.
George Orwell provided a poignant eyewitness account of the events in Homage to Catalonia, first published soon after he returned from Spain (London: Secker and Warburg, 1938). On this topic, see Chap. 11: ‘Defending the Republic from the Enemy Within’, in Paul Preston’s The Spanish Holocaust (London: HarperPress, 2013), pp. 384–427.
- 14.
This support was an exception to the rule and followed the transfer from Serbian Četniks, who were largely monarchic, to Partisans. The change was partly due to the compromises between the Četniks and Axis forces, especially Italy , and the efficiency of the Partisans. However, Četniks, collaboration remains a disputed topic. See Sabrina Ramet, The Three Yugoslavias: State-Building and Legitimation, 1918–2005 (New York: Indiana University Press, 2006), pp. 145–155 and Marko Attila Hoare, Genocide and Resistance in Hitler’s Bosnia: The Partisans and the Chetniks, 1941–1943 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
- 15.
Caldwell, ‘What about women? Italian Films and their Concerns’, in Heroines without Heroes: Reconstructing Female and National Identities in European Cinema 1945–51, ed. by Ulrike Sieglohr (London and New York: Cassell, 2000), pp. 131–46 (p. 136).
- 16.
The coalition was established on 8 September, following Italy’s surrender and the signing of the Armistice of Cassibile . It included representatives of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) , Christian Democrats (DC), Action Party (PdA), Liberal Party (PLI), Sociality Party of Proletarian Union (PSIUP) and Labour Democrats (DL).
- 17.
Jack Nachbar, ‘Doing the Thinking for All of Us: Casablanca and the Home Front’, Journal of Popular Film and Television, 27.4 (2000), 5–15 (p. 13).
- 18.
Lorre’s presence in this film crosses the boundary between fiction and reality, as he had been portrayed two years earlier as a Jewish child murderer in one of the most prominent Nazi propaganda films , Fritz Hippler’s The Eternal Jew (Der ewige Jude, 1940). Hippler’s antisemitic film uses the character played by Lorre in Fritz Lang’s M (M – Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder, 1931) as Lorre’s real persona.
- 19.
Weygand had been the Vichy Delegate-General for the North African colonies up to 1941, and any letter signed by him would carry no weight at the time. De Gaulle, who was the head of the Free French government in exile, had been convicted of treason in absentia by a Vichy court martial and had been sentenced to life imprisonment on 2 August 1940. Therefore, a letter signed by him would also have been of little use.
- 20.
Richard Rashke mentions that ‘all winter the Jews in the mechanic shop had been whispering about an escape. It began with a French Jew and a Polish Jew …The French Jew, an older man, had fought in the Spanish Civil War against the Fascists’. See Escape from Sobibor (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), p. 95.
- 21.
For example, in Belgium’s mining area of Borinage, ‘the first partisan teams united veterans of the International Brigades with communist miners who had access to dynamite’. See Pieter Lagrou, ‘Belgium ’, in Resistance in Western Europe, ed. by Bob Moore (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2000), pp. 27–63 (p. 44). Likewise, in Denmark , ‘The old fighters from the Spanish civil war formed the core of what later developed into BOPA, the biggest sabotage organization of the occupation’. See Hans Kirchhoff, ‘Denmark’, in Resistance in Western Europe, ed. by Moore, pp. 93–124 (p. 101). Also, in Italy , as Tom Behan remarks, ‘Mussolini’s forces sometime found themselves fighting Italian anti-fascists in the International Brigades. At this time brigades such as Luigi Longo or Giovani Pesce participated in the resistance. Pesce went on to suggest that: who went on to suggest that ‘Spain was huge moral, political and military training ground. It gave experience to hundreds and thousands of people who the led the European Resistance’. See Behan, The Italian Resistance: Fascists, Guerrillas and the Allies (London and New York: Pluto, 2009), pp. 14–15, 17. In Yugoslavia, although initially the Partisan forces were small and poorly armed, Tito called on the cadre of Spanish Civil War veterans whom he trusted and who had experience in guerrilla tactics. See Savo Pešić, Španjolski građanski rat i KPJ (Rijeka: Izdavački centar, 1990). For the role played by Spanish veterans in the struggle of Soviet partisans, see John A. Armstrong, Soviet Partisans in World War II (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), pp. 11–12. Armstrong also notes that, although widely used at first, the Soviet veterans of the Spanish Civil War were also ‘special targets for the purge’ (p. 48).
- 22.
Behan, The Italian Resistance, pp. 14–15, 17.
- 23.
Armstrong, ‘We’ll Always Have Paris’, p. 137.
- 24.
Nachbar illustrates how the film’s ‘most obvious lesson is the necessity of self-sacrifice for the sake of the greater good’, offering one example that ‘was but one snowflake in a national blizzard of explanation’. See ‘Doing the Thinking for All of Us’, p. 6.
- 25.
Portelli, The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History (New York: State University of New York Press, 1991), p. 2.
- 26.
Gottlieb, ‘Introduction: Open City: Reappropriating the Old, Making the New’, in Roberto Rossellini’s Rome Open City, ed. by Sydney Gottlieb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 1–30 (p. 4).
- 27.
Marcus, Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 37.
- 28.
Hurley further notes that: ‘The protagonists of the film are all either directly involved in the resistance, or support it in a secondary capacity. Consequently, the resistance, and the actions of the partisans, whose ranks comprised almost exclusively working-class men, are fundamental to his [Rossellini’s] vision of the new nation’. See ‘Working-Class Communities and the New Nation: Italian Resistance Film and the Remaking of Italy’, in The Essence and the Margin: National Identities and Collective Memories in Contemporary European Culture, ed. by Anna Saunders and Laura Rorato (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009), pp. 71–86 (pp. 72, 73).
- 29.
Michael P. Rogin , ‘Mourning, Melancholia, and the Popular Front: Roberto Rossellini’s Beautiful Revolution’, in Gottlieb, Open City, pp. 131–60 (p. 136).
- 30.
On Italy’s role in the Spanish Civil War, see John Coverdale’s study Italian Intervention in the Spanish Civil War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975).
- 31.
Fogu , ‘Italiani brava gente: The Legacy of Fascist Historical Culture on Italian Politics of Memory’, in The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe, ed. by Richard Ned Lebow, Wulf Kansteiner and Claudio Fogu (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2006), pp. 147–76 (p. 150).
- 32.
The Brigade was formed in Mahora (Albacete) in November 1936 and was made up of seven Battalions: Garibaldi Battalion (Albanian, Italian and Spanish volunteers), André Marty Battalion (Franco-Belgian volunteers), Dabrowski Battalion (also known as the Dombrowski Battalion, with exiled Polish volunteers), Thaelmann Battalion (named after Ernst Thälmann, with German and Austrian volunteers), Figlio Battalion (Spanish volunteers), Madrid Battalion (Spanish volunteers) and Prieto Battalion (other volunteers). The communist-led resistance fighters in Italy also used the title Garibaldi brigades, comprising half of the ‘around 12,000–13,000 fighting men’. See Corni, ‘Italy’, in Resistance in Western Europe, ed. by Moore, pp. 157–87 (p. 164).
- 33.
This was plastered in one of the most famous posters about Poland produced in the UK in 1939 by Polish exile Marek Żuławski (1908–1985), who worked for the BBC at the time. The son of Jerzy Żuławski, Marek Żuławski was born into a Polish nationalist family. His father died in the First World War , fighting for Polish independence, while his mother, Kazimiera Żuławska, was recognized as Righteous among the Nations for sheltering Jews in Warsaw during the Second World War .
- 34.
Mazierska , ‘A Generation: Wajda on War’, Criterion (https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1053-a-generation-wajda-on-war).
- 35.
Mroz , ‘The Monument and the Sewer: Memory and Death in Wajda’s Kanal (1957), Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 34:4 (2004), 528–45 (p. 532).
- 36.
Mroz , ‘The Monument and the Sewer’, p. 529.
- 37.
Mroz , ‘The Monument and the Sewer’, p. 531.
- 38.
Coates , ‘Wajda’s Imagination of Disaster: War Trauma, Surrealism and Kitsch’, in The Cinema of Andrzej Wajda: The Art of Irony and Defiance, ed. by John Orr and Elzbieta Ostrowska (London: Wallflower Press, 2003), pp. 15–29 (p. 17).
- 39.
According to Mroz , ‘Many of the fictionalized scenes that follow were modelled on photographs and newsreel footage showing combat , ruined buildings, or insurgents exiting from the sewers’. See ‘The Monument and the Sewer ’, p. 532.
- 40.
M. R. D. Foot notes that, although the exact number is impossible to determine, at its highest, in 1944, it had just over 10,000 men and 3200 women. See The Special Operations Executive 1940–1946 (London: Mandarin, 1999), p. 78.
- 41.
See Foot , The Special Operations Executive, p. 300.
- 42.
Pattinson , Behind Enemy Lines: Gender, Passing and the Special Operations Executive in the Second World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), pp. 99–112 (p. 104).
- 43.
This epic film had three directors who divided their work according to the geography of D-Day, with Ken Annakin dealing with Great Britain and France , Andrew Marton with the USA and Bernhard Wicki with Germany .
- 44.
Bordwell and Thompson , Film Art: An Introduction, 7th Edition (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2004), p. 205. Bordwell and Thompson analyse in great detail the unusual sound effects of Bresson’s film in a section dedicated to ‘Functions of Film Sound: A Man Escaped’, pp. 377–85.
- 45.
Pipolo , ‘A Man Escaped: Quintessential Bresson’, Criterion (https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/2628-a-man-escaped-quintessential-bresson).
- 46.
Doug Cummings and Trond Trondsen , ‘Robert Bresson, A Man Escaped [Un condamné à mort s’est échappé, 1956]’, Review, 2004 (http://people.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/robert-bresson.com/Words/ManEscapedNewYorker.html).
- 47.
Ebert , ‘Great Movies: Army of Shadows’, 21 May 2006 (http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-army-of-shadows-1969).
- 48.
According to his biographer, Rui Nogueira, Melville kept this name after the war because he received his military decoration under it. See Melville on Melville, ed. by Rui Nogueira (London: Secker & Warburg, 1971).
- 49.
Vincendeau, Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris (London: British Film Institute, 2003).
- 50.
Quoted in Ebert , ‘Great Movies: Army of Shadows’, 21 May 2006 (http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-army-of-shadows-1969).
- 51.
Ebert , ‘Great Movies: Army of Shadows’.
- 52.
See Robert O. Paxton , ‘Mellville’s French Resistance’, The Criterion Collection (http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1711-melville-s-french-resistance).
- 53.
The reference to ‘national hero and international treasure’ appears in Steve Rose’s interview with the director on the fortieth anniversary of May 68 . See ‘Irony Man’, Guardian, 9 May 2008 (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/may/09/1).
- 54.
Hames, The Czechoslovak New Wave (London and New York, Wallflower Press, 2005).
- 55.
Marlisle Simons, ‘Chirac Affirms France’s Guilt in Fate of Jews’, New York Times , 17 July 1995 (http://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/17/world/chirac-affirms-france-s-guilt-in-fate-of-jews.html).
- 56.
See Jean Lacouture , Mitterrand, une histoire de Français (Paris: Seuil, 1998), pp. 75–79. On this topic, see also Franz-Olivier Giesbert, François Mitterrand, une vie (Paris: Seuil, 1996), especially pp. 77–79.
- 57.
Jean-Pierre Bloch, however, suggested that Mitterrand was ordered to accept the medal as cover for his work in the resistance. See De Gaulle ou le temps des méprises (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1969), pp. 216–18. More recently, Jacques Attali has contested Bloch’s claim in C’était François Mitterrand (Paris: Fayard, 2005).
- 58.
See The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
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Camino, M. (2018). The Civilian Resister (1942–69). In: Memories of Resistance and the Holocaust on Film. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49969-1_2
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