Truth and Propaganda

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 459, 9 April 1948, Page 24

Truth and Propaganda

To the Editor-Sir.-We were rather disappointed in reading Jno.’s review of Kameradschaft. Surely it was most necessary to preach the gospel of international co-operation to the defeated Germans, as past history has so amply proved. And because the film was produced for German audiences, the accident had to happen on (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) French soil to give the German miners an opportunity of overcoming their nationalistic prejudices. This emphasis on German humanitarianism might appear slightly offensive and perhaps insincere to French audiences and to us in New Zealand 17 years later. For identical reasons that great French film La Grande Tlusion, which tackled a similar problem from the French point of view, caused some offence to Germans. The unforturiate fact that the dialogue slipped ‘unnoticed in at one ear and out at the other" allowed Jno. to miss the real drama of the story, which lay in the extraordinary circumstances required to overcome the bitterness and tension existing in that border region. A New Zealander who has not experienced this conflict and national antagonism which still exists in many parts of Europe might consider it perfectly natural for a rescue party to go from one part of a mine to another. He might not realise that the "little things dividing nations" which irritated Jno. were not only necessary to the story, but also very big and real things which entirely conditioned life in that district. The German miners swept aside these emotional barriers to help their French comrades, This was the crux of the film. And very cleverly the director built up this story of conflict-the two boys who could not play together without quarrels, the petty restrictions at the border, the incident in the dance-hall-reaching its climax in the dramatic dialogue in the Germans’ shower bath where the realisation on the part of the few that all workers should stand together slowly overcame the nationalistic prejudice of the many. Finally, Roger Manvell and Dante to the contrary, did not the aged Frenchman call out for his grandson Jean-and not Georges?

BERT AND MARGOT ROTH

(Wellington)

(Jno. replies: "It might be a little unfair to ask Bert and Margot Roth in what countries the gospel of international co-operation

could be most profitably preached to-day, but I would remind them that Germany was deeper in defeat in 1931 than in 1918. When Kafneradschaft was made the danger was not German revanche, but from French in-transigence-the withdrawal of French credits from Austria and Germany in 1931, for example, caused widespread distress in both these countries, Leaving history and politics aside, however, it appears that we share common ground in regarding Kameradschaft as propagandist im intention. We are also agreed that the overt theme is internationalism. The question therefore is how that theme is served. I maintain that it has. not been served well. There is too much truth in the picture to make good propaganda, and the suggestion that it was necessary to build up a story uf conflict to point the moral of co-operation betrays a radical rnisunderstanding of the power of the moving picture. It is the total emotional effect of a film which counts, and the total effect of Kameradschaft is that a frontier separates different peoples as well as different political systems-whether it be Frontiére 1919 or Frontiére 1935. Cleverness is frequently caught in its own toils. Finally, I heard the word ‘Georges’ with my own ears, not Roger Manvell’s, and I am therefore prepared to concede that I may have erred-if Bert or Margot Roth can show me a medial ‘r’ in Jean, or in any of its diminutives."-