It Happened Here (1965)

Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo

UK

96 min, black and white, English

After the fall of France, Germany invaded Britain, conquering it very quickly. Small remnants of the resistance struggle at the margins, the Americans are trying to invade from Ireland. The British world has been turned into a totalitarian nightmare, with local anti-semitic Nazis running the National Socialist Party branch, the Immediate Action Organization. Everything is regimented, regulated, and stability has more or less been restored. The British people who have not joined the resistance (i.e. most of them) have either become desperate, jobless roaming thugs, or willing collaborators. Starting in 1943, three years after the conquest, the story follows Pauline, an apolitical nurse who has to join IAO to work as a nurse.

This is a classic film that could have been better. It is an impressive achievement given the ages of the film-makers (18 and 16, respectively when they started making it), the time and dedication it took (8 years, no budget, sewing uniforms by hand), the care with which it was staged (factually accurate detail, rows with government over staging Nazis marching in London), and the strong message it conveys in an absolutely detached way.

I understand that It Happened Here caused a lot of controversy at home, mostly because many Britishers could not see themselves as willing collaborators of a repugnant regime. Such patriotic indignation is, of course, understandable, but it is also quite misplaced. Every nation can become domesticated, no exceptions. This is because most people care about their --- and their families' --- well-being first and foremost. The trick is to make life tolerable enough and reduce the prospects for another alternative sufficiently. Providing peace, stability, and relatively decent (by no means opulent!) existence coupled with a very credible threat to punish all attempts to overthrow the regime would do it. This is how the communist camp survived for so long. It would have also survived longer if it were not for the leadership who wobbled on its threat to punish potential challenges to its authority. It won't make for a happy nation, but it will work.

The film's idea that it could happen in Britain is perhaps disturbing for many, but it is certainly not implausible. Heck, it could happen in America too, and I don't care how many gun-toting survivalists take to the forests of Wisconsin. If our home-grown FBI can torch them, then surely a dedicated totalitarian would have little trouble doing it too. And much better.

The film has several incredibly strong scenes and images but it must be seen to be appreciated. The scene with Pauline unwittingly killing innocent people is magnificently chilling because it gets closest to how a real totalitarian society would have organized euthanasia.

So the film's premise and main idea are entirely plausible. Why is it still a weak film then? (OK, it's not weak per se, it's just weak with respect to the potential the idea has.) Because although the idea is right, it is marred by certain problems. I understand that a lot of it had to do with the limited budget of the movie, but some of it just shows rather unpersuasive scripting and story-telling skills. A film like this depends a lot on its ability to convey its point in a manner that requires minimal suspension of disbelief. In fact, the best possible outcome would be for the audience to suspend disbelief only once, at the very outset, when the narrator tells of the United Kingdom losing the war to Germany. From this point on, everything should follow smoothly and logically. That is to say, if you accept the premise, you must necessarily accept the rest. I rather hoped that the film would do exactly that but it did not. Here are several of my main gripes.

The documentary feel was fine, but letting the real English fascists and hate-mongers sputter their idiocy weakened the impact. It may be that the problem is with their ideas being so stupid that they don't even package well, or the guys being such utter morons that they cannot sell them. But we do know that all sorts of lunatic dogmas sell quite well and have been for a long time, it's all a matter of marketing: Nazism, Communism, Judaism, Anti-Semitism, Christianity, Islam, and the claim that Kellogg's cereals are Grrrrreat! You name it, it's been sold. It would have been much scarier if these fascists could wrap their propaganda in something that sounded respectable and reasonable. That's art now, and that's what makes these ideas so dangerous, their plausibility. The film lets Frank Bennett sputter out his half-assed cretinism with such pathetic dedication that it is pitiful. But not even remotely convincing, and therefore weak. I regarded him and his as a curiosity, like I would regard a freak in a circus: not amusing, not scary, but just worthless and boring. Maybe that's just my intolerance to these things, who knows? (The theatrical U.S. version apparently excised about 6 minutes of these inane monologues. What a disservice: they are so weak, one would probably turn pacifist from the "arguments".)

I also thought that the radio bleating constant war propaganda was dumb (although I can definitely see it happening this way). Would you serve constant reminders to a conquered nation that they are still at war somewhere? Wouldn't you rather kill all hope for resistance by beaming happy songs about normal life of peace, stability, and prosperity, which is threatened from periodic attacks by these damn terrorists (not partisans)? Why remind people that they've lost. Instead, I'd co-opt them into the new regime by making it as unobtrusive and British as possible. I certainly would not immediately seek to transplant the German version of National Socialism to England, it would be too obvious, and too easy to resist. I would instead let the British create their own version of it, under the discreet watchful eye of the Nazi party, but run entirely by themselves. I'd only provide occasional "consultations" and perhaps even "friendly advice" but no direct intervention. The illusion of self-governance is essential to every properly-run dominion.

The Orwellian take was too obvious. I have lived in a totalitarian country, and it did not work like that. There's the ostensible charade where everyone pays lip service to the gods of ideology, sure. But the damn thing worked in much more devious ways too. I was too young to live through the years of direct oppression and purges (and in Bulgaria they only lasted for a few years and were quite limited in scale, nothing like the Soviet monstrosities), but I did live through the decaying years, although I did not really understand it. You rather quickly learn that even if you disagree with the dogma, unless you embrace it, your chances of worldly success were nil. You did not have to believe the ideology, just had to wear it, and wear it well. The cunning part was that the communists had made it exclusive. The Party never had wide membership, it was an elite club that provided goodies for members (or rather, restricted non-members from having them). The mythology developed in a way that made membership a necessity at first, but an elite badge of distinction next. That's scary.

Pauline's behavior was not clear to me. She started as a relatively apolitical, even apathetic country nurse. Then, during an evacuation, several of her acquaintances get shot, she believes by partisans. She develops a strong urge to enjoy peace, tranquility, and stability. So far so good. She goes to London and is shanghaied into working for the Immediate Action Organization (IAO), the only way to get a job. I can see that too. She undergoes a rather pointless training (Since when do nurses have to be sharp-shooters? In a real totalitarian regime, the last thing the government would want is more people with combat skills) and then starts wearing her IAO uniform just to be abused by various silent patriots. Well, fine. She then finds out that a family with whom she is friends is hiding a partisan and is even thinking of going underground. She tries to talk them into giving up on that (and into turning the guy over to the police) but she is unsuccessful. On her way out, an upstairs neighbor suspiciously inquires about screams from her friends' apartment. She says nothing and leaves. (I would think to at least warn my friends that the upstairs Nazi collaborator has taken an interest in the sounds. At least.) Not surprisingly, the family is soon caught and imprisoned, and a few days later Pauline herself is sacked, apparently for failing to inform of their treasonous plans. Ok, I see that too. She is assigned to a tranquil country sanatorium that specializes in the treatment of incurable Eastern European workers (!). Yep, she swallows that too. When the next truckload of poor EE workers with incurable TB arrives, she is ordered to administer the injections. They are told it's to inoculate them, and she believes it (what a nurse, eh?). Next morning she sees the freshly dug mounds in the back garden, and she finally understands the mysterious disappearance of all patients. She then gets arrested (?), presumably for being unhappy about euthanazing a bunch of EE workers, captured by partisans, shanghaied into caring for their wounded. The partisans then get a bunch of Germans to surrender and shoot them all in cold blood, mimicking the murder of civilians at the hands of Germans at the beginning. We have now come full circle. But what about Pauline? Just as apathetic as she was in the beginning, working like a well-wound robot, this time for the other murderers. Or is that not murder, if it's in the name of liberation? Who knows? Why was this scene there at all? What was I supposed to infer from it?

The Image DVD just isn't that good. The dark scenes in particular are impossible to follow. The sound is very inconsistent and uneven (a result of the original recording, sure, but they should have fixed that), resulting in barely audible dialogue and very loud noises. Unfortunately, this is the only way to see this film (unless you chance some theatrical projection, but I understand the quality may be worse than the DVD), and definitely the way to own it. At close to $20, it is not exactly a steal. Gotta love the cover though: Soldiers in German uniforms marching, with Big Ben in the background.

March 8, 2003