Propaganda Cinema: How the ‘Right’ Narratives Get Transmitted Through Film
Filmmakers working under the state's watchful eye.
When calls to action in manifestos or speeches don't bring the expected results, propaganda turns to other tools of influence — culture among them.
But while today's viewers have a wide choice of films and platforms to watch them on, watching a film used to be a rare event, and the available repertoire was strictly limited. The state or relevant commissions often controlled what appeared on screen, turning cinema into a one-way tool of influence.
Propaganda still appears on screens today, often on an even larger scale, delivered in more sophisticated ways and disguised more carefully. The DeTalks team examined the history of propaganda cinema and its contemporary examples.
Where It All Began
Propaganda cinema reached its greatest development in countries with authoritarian regimes — above all, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. In the latter, this kind of cinema began actively developing after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933.
Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, attached special importance to cinema. On July 14, 1933, the Provisional Film Chamber of the Reich was established to control the film industry.
One of the Third Reich's first propaganda films was 'Hitler Youth Quex,' directed by Hans Steinhoff, based on the novel by Karl Aloys Schünzinger.
The film's plot centers on the political struggle between Communist and National Socialist forces in the years before 1933. Its protagonist, teenager Heini Völker, is drawn to National Socialist ideas despite his unemployed, alcoholic father's communist beliefs, and becomes fascinated with the 'Hitler Youth' (a pro-Hitler youth organization founded in 1922).
The protagonist begins 'helping the nation' as a member of the organization, and is ultimately killed by communists for it. The film was the first to use the "Hitler Youth" anthem.
Later, in 1940, the aforementioned Goebbels commissioned director Veit Harlan to make the film 'Jud Süß,' now considered one of the most antisemitic films in history.
And from 1940 until March 22, 1945, movie theaters screened the propaganda newsreel series 'Die Deutsche Wochenschau' (the sole German newsreel). It was shown once a week, mandatorily, before film screenings, and was sent to Germany's allies. The newsreel covered 'all the good things' — the German army winning, the glorification of the Third Reich and the Führer visiting the front, and the decorating of soldiers and officers.
Until the very end, the newsreel kept convincing audiences of Germany's victories, focusing on tiny advances at the front and glossing over major defeats. 'Die Deutsche Wochenschau' stopped airing a month and a half before Germany's final defeat in the war.
Today, the newsreel is one of the most important sources of German wartime newsreel footage from that era.
Leni Riefenstahl: Talent in the Service of Ideology
Director Leni Riefenstahl is known for one clear label — 'Hitler's favorite director.'
Her film 'Triumph of the Will' covers the 1934 Nazi Party congress. The film is considered the pinnacle of Riefenstahl's Nazi propaganda filmmaking.
Her other film, 'Olympia' (1938), was dedicated to the 1936 Olympic Games. Despite its groundbreaking approach to filming sporting events, the film also promoted the idea of Aryan physical superiority.
Leni herself, after the war, claimed she knew nothing about the Third Reich's crimes, but letters from an officer to her husband suggest Riefenstahl bore responsibility for the killing of Jews in the town of Końskie while filming one of her scenes.
Ira Mahdysh, program director of the Museum of Ideas, has described watching Leni Riefenstahl's films and seeing pompous parades decorated with Nazi symbolism, recognizing that this, too, has its own beauty and aesthetic, noting that probably no one else in the world has done things like this, and that Riefenstahl managed to film it in an extraordinarily beautiful way, since she was a director with a capital D, a talented artist, written Ira Mahdysh, program director of the Museum of Ideas, in 2011.
Mahdysh has said that, on the other hand, it's hard for her to accept that Riefenstahl spent her great directorial talent in the name of a criminal regime, adding that perhaps Riefenstahl was placed in those circumstances and worked within whatever limits she was allowed, and that if she hadn't shown it, we might never have known or seen the aesthetic, and therefore even more dangerous, side of that regime and the ideology that captivated millions of people.
Mahdysh has concluded that the topic is extremely ambiguous and relevant, so through the efforts of various experts in the discussion, they'll be searching for answers.
Over the years the Third Reich existed, released 1,097 feature films in total, one in every ten of which contained outright political propaganda. Among the biggest names in German cinema at the time were figures like F. Harlan, F. Wenzler, L. Riefenstahl, composers W. Zeller and H. Windt, and actors F. Marian, W. Krauss, and H. George, among others.
Soviet Cinema as a Tool of Myth-Making
Lenin has described film and the circus as the two most important arts for a still-illiterate population, said Lenin to People's Commissar Anatoly Lunacharsky in 1922.
Larysa Briukhovetska's book 'Film Art: A Textbook for University Students' states that the beginning of Soviet propaganda cinema (like ordinary cinema) dates back to the 1917 October coup, when private filmmakers managed to capture parts of the events. After that, the Bolshevik authorities recognized the importance of documenting and covering specific events.
According to the film critic, Sergei Eisenstein's film 'October,' which depicts that same revolution, is made up of fabricated events.
Larysa Briukhovetska has described how Sergei Eisenstein literally constructed, in front of the camera, an imagined course of events for the Great October Socialist Revolution (the October Bolshevik coup), doing so so convincingly that, to this day, many people, especially foreign viewers, perceive his film 'October' as a documentary, said Larysa Briukhovetska.
Sergei Eisenstein is one of the most famous Soviet directors when it comes to propaganda or fabricated scripts. His other film, 'Battleship Potemkin,' from 1925, about the first mutiny in the history of the Black Sea Fleet, became, according to journalist Oleh Panfilov, 'the first ideological masterpiece.' In 1958, in Brussels, the film was included among the twelve best in history.
Historical Note: in 1905, the first armed mutiny in the history of the Black Sea Fleet broke out on the battleship Potemkin, led by artillery petty officer Hryhorii Vakulenchuk, a native of Zhytomyr, who was later mortally wounded by one of the ship's officers.
The propaganda, and its discrepancies with actual historical events, lay in the wholesale dramatization and distortion of facts. Eisenstein's film was used by Bolshevik propaganda to underscore the cruelty of tsarist authorities, who supposedly 'ordered troops to fire on civilians on the Odesa Steps' in one of the film's most famous scenes. In reality, this never happened.
The death toll in the Soviet director's film was also artificially inflated, when in reality, only a few officers were killed. The mutinous sailors were portrayed in the film as ideologically driven revolutionaries, when in reality, the mutineers held a range of political views and beliefs, united by a single triggering incident.
In 2005, Eduard Shcheglov, head of the Odesa City Council's information department and a historian, in an interview with a British journalist, admitted that 'Sergei Eisenstein's film is a masterpiece,' but was offended by the extent of the film's falsehoods.
Shcheglov has said there was no bloodshed at all on the steps — that Eisenstein made the whole thing up, behaving like a big Hollywood director rewriting history to make the film earn more money, except that his goal wasn't to make money but to create an impression, which he succeeded at doing.
Up until the 1930s, Ukrainian and Soviet cinema had at least some influence on world cinema, since it made it beyond the Union's borders. After that, there was no more traffic 'from here to there' or 'from there to here,' and the entire film industry became purely propagandistic.
In a comment for Detector Media, writer and screenwriter Andrii Kokotiukha stressed that this applies particularly to the films of director Vsevolod Pudovkin — his 'Suvorov' (1940) and 'Admiral Nakhimov' (1945), which became reference points for the tendentious, propagandistic, and 'boring' Soviet cinema of that era.
Kokotiukha has said that the failure of this stage of film propaganda was that filmmaking no longer recruited talented people, only loyal ones, said Kokotiukha.
The ideology surrounding Ukraine in Soviet, and now Russian, films has passed through a series of stock images: the hardworking ideologue; the soldier fighting against Nazism; the collective farmer, once again; the nationalist and criminal; the nationalist and Bandera supporter.
Eisenstein X Goebbels
In June 1928, Germany's very own 'minister of propaganda,' Goebbels, wrote about Eisenstein's film.
Goebbels has described watching 'Potemkin' one evening, saying the film was made astonishingly well, with absolutely wonderful crowd scenes, and that its slogans were formulated so cleverly there was nothing to object to, calling the film genuinely dangerous, and lamenting that Germany had nothing like it.
As early as March 1933, Joseph Goebbels gathered Germany's leading filmmakers at the Hotel Kaiserhof and again spoke about the Soviet film.
Goebbels has described the film as a masterpiece with no equal, attributing this to the power of its persuasion, saying that anyone without firm political convictions could be converted to Bolshevism after watching it, and that it demonstrated, with perfect clarity, that art can be tendentious and successfully spread even the worst ideas if done with outstanding skill.
On February 10, 1934, at Berlin's Kroll Opera House, the Reich Minister delivered a second speech about the film.
Goebbels has said he was convinced that if they could produce a film in one of their own movie palaces that truly captured their era and became a genuinely National Socialist 'Battleship,' tickets to that theater would sell out completely, for a long time to come.
The Soviet director himself mockingly responded that no other 'Battleship' could exist, since a film of that caliber could only exist 'in a country like the Soviet Union.'
Eisenstein has said that in their day, great art, a truthful depiction of life, the truth of life, and life itself, were only possible in the Soviet country — regardless of what it used to be called.
Despite (or thanks to) Goebbels's enthusiasm, in 1937, the Nazi answer to 'Potemkin' came out — 'Battleship Sevastopol.' The German film was the exact opposite: in its plot, officers defended themselves against 'evil' mutinous sailors, and the protagonist, Count Kostia, left Russia with his fiancee. The mutinous sailors in the film turn their guns on civilians. After 1939 and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the film was pulled from German theaters.
Cinema in North Korea
Although North Korea is closed off from the world and its trends, it too used cinema to strengthen its own ideology. Through films, the Kim family convinced the population of its own perfection and sanctity, while portraying the 'West' as enemies living terrible lives.
The Department of Propaganda and Agitation, newly created after 1945, paid particular attention to cinema. Watching a film was a collective affair, which made spreading ideology easier.
The first feature film released in North Korea was 'My Home Village' (1949), about an uprising against Japanese occupation with the help of Kim Il-sung's army.
Kim Jong-il, Kim Il-sung's son, viewed the importance of the film industry and the Department differently. At the time, the quality of North Korean cinema left much to be desired, while South Korean cinema, by contrast, had its own 'stars' among both directors and actors.
Because of this, in 1978, Kim "kidnapped" famous South Korean actress Choi Eun-hee and later her ex-husband — formerly a South Korean director, Shin Sang-ok. The man was held in prison for several months, forced to watch North Korean films and write to the 'Leader' about what should change. The quality of his living conditions changed depending on the number of suggestions he gave, and he was eventually released.
Kim Jong-il admitted to kidnapping the actress because it made it easier to lure Ok to North Korea. The director founded the film company 'Shin Films' and became its director.
The newly founded studio's first film was 'An Emissary of No Return' (1984), about a North Korean emissary (agent) who defended the country's rights on the international stage in The Hague and committed hara-kiri right after his speech in the meeting hall.
That July, the film won an award for Best Director at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival. Kim then called Ok and asked the couple to tell the world that they weren't working in North Korea under compulsion — simply that it was only there, and not in the capitalist world with its harsh political censorship, that they could realize their talents.
In today's film propaganda, North Korea uses the same tactics as before — hatred of Americans and the glorification of the 'nation.' In the North Korean series 'Our Neighbors,' about life in an apartment building, a child in one family falls seriously ill and is hospitalized. Relatives gather in one apartment, anxiously discussing the situation, then turn on the television, and everyone suddenly runs to the screen, celebrating and jumping: on screen is a test launch of a domestic long-range missile!
Russia — Heir to Soviet Propaganda
Modern Russian propaganda entirely follows the Soviet model. It never really went away: the information space is still dominated by the narrative of military superiority and the worthlessness of 'enemies,' the hostility of the 'West,' and others.
For a long time, Ukraine, too, calmly consumed this propaganda, at the state level, and only in 2015, with amendments to Ukraine's Law 'On Cinematography' did Ukraine manage to restrict the screening of 579 Russian feature films and TV shows, reads a piece by Detector Media.
Russia's current government allocates enormous funding for propaganda in film, because it works there, and there's an audience for it there.