A new Blu-ray from Flicker Alley features two feature-length documentaries by American documentary filmmaker Herbert Kline. It’s called Against the Storm: Herbert Kline in a Darkened Europe. The two films were award winners, highly praised by the mainstream press when they came out in the late 1930s. They haven’t been spotlighted in more recent decades. Both deal with the Nazi takeover of Europe. With the unending interest in movies about the Nazi era, there should be plenty of attention paid to this collection.
Crisis: A Film of “The Nazi Way” chronicles the subtle and not so subtle steps that changed the Czechoslovak Republic from a free country, a democracy with a contented people working and living in peace. Intellectuals, trade unionists, workers of all sorts, people of varied ethnic and religious backgrounds, the children, the elderly and infirm…. They are living side-by-side in a healthy atmosphere. But changes are threatened. War may come. Gas masks are distributed.
Adolph Hitler recognized Czechoslovakia as the gateway to Eastern Europe, to its peoples, its natural resources, and cultural and financial assets.
Crisis is a record of what took place from the Anshluss on March 12,1938 to October 1 of that year, in Prague, Eger, and Bohemia (renamed by Hitler the Sudetenland). The quality of this film is high, no wonder it won awards and was deemed by at least one critic as one of the top films of 1939 (which was a primo year in filmmaking). Working alongside Herbert Kline on this project were two significant filmmakers, the noted Czech director Hans Burger and then Czech/later American filmmaker-photographer Alexander Hackenschmied (later called Alexander Hammid). Hollywood and Broadway star Fredric March, who co-founded the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League in 1936, narrates.
A word about Alexander Hammid. Through the history of independent filmmaking, there have been talents that have been given less spotlight than they deserve. Hammid is not a name as recognized as Andy Warhol, Jonas Mekas, Francis Thompson, or Maya Deren. However, he was talented and as important to the history as any of those people. He worked with Maya Deren—was married to her for a time, and their Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) would not be the brilliant work that it is without his input. His film with Francis Thompson, To Be Alive (1964), made for the World’s Fair in NYC, won multiple awards, including an Oscar. I met him in the late 1970s. It was an honor to speak with him.
Kline’s follow-up film Lights Out in Europe was released in early 1940. It offers a look at Britain’s preparations for war. The Londoners, in a quiet but determined mobilization, are made to carry gas masks. Shelters are installed in back yards. Children are tagged and put on trains for temporary resettlement in the country. The financial district invests in war goods, ammo, airplanes. Lupino Lane sings propagandistic victory songs. Buildings are sand-bagged. The commentary by novelist James Hilton. Fredric March, again, narrates. We see the Poles after the invasion of the Nazis. Sadly, they did not prepare well. They are injured, dying, making last-minute preparations for future attacks. They are beaten.
Some of the footage in these docs is incredible, often more intimately captured than in newsreels of the period. The restoration by the Museum of Modern Art is high quality, and the Blu-ray from Flicker Alley is topnotch, with extras and commentaries galore.
Included with the Blu-ray is an essay by noted film historian Thomas Doherty, along with researched information by Maria Elena de las Carreras. The seizing of power by Hitler and his Third Reich is frightening. These films illustrate how the rights of free people can be obliterated.
Audrey Kupferberg is a film and video archivist and retired appraiser. She is lecturer emeritus and the former director of Film Studies at the University at Albany and co-authored several entertainment biographies with her late husband and creative partner, Rob Edelman.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
