It Happened Here is a 1966 British film, set in an alternate history in which Nazi Germany successfully invades and occupies the United Kingdom during World War II.
Plot
The film opens with the statement: "The German invasion of England took place in 1940 after the retreat from Dunkirk". After months of fierce resistance and brutal reprisals, the occupying forces manage to restore order largely suppressing the resistance movement. However, due to demands from the Ural Mountains front, most German troops are eventually removed from Western Europe, and the garrisoning of Britain is largely carried out by local volunteers to the German army and SS. England appears to be governed by the British Union of Fascists (the situation in the rest of the British Isles is unclear but presumably similar); the followers are referred to as "Blackshirts", wear uniforms with the Flash and Circle, and a framed portrait of Oswald Mosley appears in a government building, alongside one of Adolf Hitler.
Meanwhile, the United States, having entered the war, stations its Seventh Fleet off Ireland and begins bombing raids on the southwest coast of England as well as supplying men and equipment to a resurgent partisan movement. Whether Ireland itself is occupied by the Americans or Germans or manages to remain neutral is not made clear.
Set in 1944, the story focuses on an apolitical Irish district nurse, Pauline. Following an upsurge in partisan activity in her area, she is forcibly evacuated from her village by the Nazis and their collaborators, and witnesses an attack on the fascist forces by a group of British partisans, during which a number of her friends from the village are killed in the crossfire. The attack, and more particularly the deaths, later influences her views and decisions.
She is evacuated to London, where she reluctantly becomes a collaborator, joining the "Immediate Action Organisation" (IAO) a kind of quasi-paramilitary medical corps of the ruling fascist party of England. She is re-trained as an ambulance attendant of the IAO. As in Germany's Nazi party, the IAO is a highly paramilitary organization intent on standardisation and discipline. Although at first reluctant and intent on remaining apolitical, Pauline begins to show the effects of indoctrination in her behaviour. It is a reunion with old friends (an antifascist doctor and his wife) that gives Pauline pause and when she subsequently discovers they are harbouring an injured partisan she (somewhat reluctantly) agrees to help.
Gradually she learns more about the impacts of the Nazi occupation. She sees her friends arrested and sees racist treatment of the Jews under German rule. The discovery of her association with the antifascist couple by her superiors in the IAO leads to her demotion and transfer to another part of the country. She actually welcomes the move at first, as her new job appears to have less of the paramilitary trappings than the ambulance corps.
Towards the end of the film, Pauline discovers that she has unwittingly taken part in a forced euthanasia programme and killed a group of foreign workers who have contracted tuberculosis (portrayed by real patients with tuberculosis). The film ends with Pauline being arrested after protesting and refusing to continue, but before she can be put on trial, she is captured and agrees to work for the British partisans as they try to liberate England with the help of arriving American troops.
In the finale, Pauline tends wounded while, out of her view, British partisans are executing a large group of soldiers from the British Legion of the SS who had formally surrendered and laid down arms, reminiscent of the SS massacre of English civilians earlier in the film.
Production and staff
The film was directed by Kevin Brownlow, who later became a prominent film historian, and Andrew Mollo, who was to become a leading military historian. Brownlow developed the concept of the film when he was eighteen, in 1956. He turned to Mollo, a sixteen-year-old history buff, to help him with the design of costumes and sets. Mollo was intrigued by the project, and became his collaborator.
The film was in the making for the next eight years, which the Guinness Book of World Records (as of 2003) calls the longest ever production schedule. It was shot in black and white on 16 mm film, giving it a grainy, newsreel feel. No stock footage was used. The audio quality (and lighting) on the opening reel is rather poor, which makes the dialog difficult to follow for the first few minutes. It had a cast of hundreds, all volunteers, with only two professional actors among them (Sebastian Shaw, Reginald Marsh). (A number of the extras in the film were members of British science fiction fandom, and a portion was previewed at a science fiction convention in Peterborough.[1][2])
The key role of Pauline, a nurse evacuated from Salisbury to London, was played by Pauline Murray. According to DVD Times,[3] Murray worked as a doctor's receptionist. DVD Times says that it is "...interesting to compare her to other British leading ladies of the time", in that the 1960s "‘Free Cinema’ movement spill[ed] over into features and a British New Wave...[led to]...films such as A Taste of Honey and Poor Cow." DVD Times writes that "...Tony Richardson’s Woodfall Film Productions (central to the new wave) stumped up the money to allow It Happened Here to be completed on a less amateur level, yet the results are quite different. Murray may share the resilience of a Rita Tushingham or Carol White, but she’s a tougher breed, altogether more human."
In a contemporary review of a showing of the film at the Little Carnegie theatre at 146 West 57th Street in New York City, published in The New York Times on August 9, 1966, titled "If the Finest Hour Had Failed: Little Carnegie Offers 'It Happened Here' Occupation of England by Nazis Depicted", Bosley Crowther wrote "The acting by unfamiliar people is beautifully natural and restrained, particularly that of Pauline Murray in the principal role. Through her human and subtle generation of an ungrudging sympathy, one becomes involved in her dilemma and is caught up all the way in the despair, uncertainty and terror of her experiences."
Stanley Kubrick, who was intrigued by the project, donated film stock from Dr. Strangelove to Brownlow to help him finish the film. Most of the equipment used in the production was borrowed. Veteran wartime BBC radio announcers Alvar Lidell and John Snagge gave their services free to voice reconstructed newsreels and radio broadcasts.[4] Director Tony Richardson helped to pay for the final production. Though the cast was almost entirely amateur, It Happened Here helped to launch the career of its cinematographer, Peter Suschitzky, who went on to work on such films as The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Empire Strikes Back.
In 1968 Brownlow published the story of how the film got made under the title How it Happened Here. The book has been reissued in updated form in 2005 (UK) and 2007 (United States).
Release and criticism
After eight years of production, the film's initial release was stormy. Many people were upset by the idea that the villains in the story were not normally Nazis but their British collaborators. The film seemed to be saying that fascism can rise anywhere under the right circumstances, and that people everywhere could fall under its spell.
Research prior to the film from various Nazi-occupied territories (including the Channel Islands) suggested that this was indeed the case. Jewish groups protested the inclusion of seven minutes of footage of British postwar fascist leader Colin Jordan, speaking against the Jews and for euthanasia. In response, this was cut from the original release, though it was restored thirty years later, after Brownlow regained the rights to the film. Critics claim the inclusion of this material gives a platform to unapologetic neo-Nazis despite the film's strongly anti-Nazi theme.
The book
How It Happened Here (re-issued March 2007, by The UKA Press, ISBN 978-1-905796-10-6) describes the making of the film It Happened Here, and the subsequent reception that the film received. Not only does it explain how two teenage boys made a feature film, it also explores the provocative social issues raised by the movie. Brownlow had allowed genuine British Fascists to play themselves in the film, which raised the hostility of Jewish organizations.
The book contains almost 100 pictures, mostly stills from the film, and an introduction by David Robinson.
See also
References
- ^ Linwood, Jim. "The Third Reich: My Part in its Downfall"; e*I*25 (Vol. 5 No. 2), April 2006 (Earl Kemp, ed.)
- ^ Skyrack #71, 20 Oct., 1964 (Ron Bennett, ed.)
- ^ DVD Times - It Happened Here
- ^ Tibbetts, JC (2000), "Kevin Brownlow's Historical Films: It Happened Here (1965) and Winstanley (1975)", Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television
External links
