So They Say: They Pretend Malnutrition, too (1974)

The So They Say Column from the March 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

They Pretend Malnutrition, too

A new addition to saloon-bar political mythology has arrived. It joins the Man Who Gets Twice as Much on Social Security as he does Working, the Black Man Who Buys Kit-E-Kat for his Sandwiches (yes, my grocer told me), the Eight Workmen Who Came and Lolled About Smoking When All I Wanted was a Screw Tightened on my Cooker, and so on.

This happy arrival is the Family Only Pretending to be Homeless. Its career was launched in the London Evening News on 18th January:

A housing chief has announced a clampdown on the “phoney homeless”. Some families are suspected of faking evictions to gain council homes. Only couples with children, facing complete family breakdown, are now likely to get official help in Hertfordshire.

Presumably you must spend a minimum of three nights on the pavement and get down to six stones per adult member of family; otherwise you’re only pretending. A family with a room to itself that wants a whole council house are sheer Epicureans, and we don’t stand for them in Hertfordshire. Take it from me, councillor, my nephew’s milkman knows this lot

No, it's Different Now

One trouble with the working class is its memory. How can you expect to get on and please the government if you forget the right things, like standing up for the Queen, and remember the wrong ones, like unemployment and politicians’ promises?

Thus, the masses have watching TV films about the war in which the Germans are shown as the hateful enemy. In the last week of January Die Welt published an article by its London correspondent Christian Ferber protesting about this. Sure enough, he was supported. A Reverend, among others, wrote to The Guardian suggesting “restoring the balance” with some programmes about good Germans in the war, specially POWS who “were permitted to visit churches and other organizations”,

People must really arrange their memories better. Saying they had to hate the Germans for six years is no excuse. If villains are shown today they should be Russians. But in the war weren’t they glorious allies or something? There you go again.

Please Spare a Copper . . .

Readers of the financial pages cannot fail to notice that profits and dividends show little sign of wilting because of the crisis. Some companies are doing well out of it. A typical example was shown in The Guardian's business section on 6th February. Under the heading blessing in disguise the buoyant position of Central Wagon, the steel stockholding and hydraulic equipment group, was described:

The company’s sales in January this year are 50 per cent up on the monthly average for the previous year . . . When the 1973 results are announced, the profit is more likely to be around the £900,000 mark—well beyond the company forecast of about £670,000 . . . Central Wagon is confident that it will produce still higher profit in 1974 —even after allowing for the miners’ strike.

But when times are bad, are they not bad for the owning class too? Were there not tales in the nineteen-thirties’ depression of ruined rich men queueing to throw themselves from high buildings? Untrue. Britain in the Nineteen Thirties by N. Branson and M. Heinemann (1972) says:

True, profits fell in the slump years (by 30 per cent at the lowest point, in 1932), but since a higher proportion of profits was paid out in dividends, shareholders’ incomes fell much less than this, while income from rent and fixed interest stocks remained more stable in spite of the fall in prices.

. . . Figures in the British Association’s Britain in Recovery, based on Colin Clark’s estimates, suggest a fall of 9-11 per cent in consumption expenditure of those with incomes over £250, from 1929 to 1933—which was almost certainly less than the fall in prices.

. . . for the Clerical Hat

Reach for your handkerchiefs. The Guardian of 8th February told the harrowing story of Britain’s underpaid vicars.

The [Church] commissioners, in a report to the General Synod, the parliament of the Church of England, say the average pay of the 9,000 vicars last November was about £35 a week. In addition, they are provided with a house free of rent and rates, but many have to meet the expenses of doing their job, which can be as high as £4 to £5 a week.

How sad for the clergy to have to put up with the austerity they urge on others. The world is too materialistic.

Film Review: Hacksaw Ridge (2025)

Film Review from the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hacksaw Ridge is a 2016 film about Desmond Doss, a conscientious objector who served as a U.S. Army medic during the Second World Slaughter. He saved 75 lives during the Battle of Okinawa and became the first conscientious objector to win the Medal of Honour (the U.S. version of the Victoria Cross). The title refers to the cliff the U.S. Army climbed over to attack the Japanese during that battle.

Desmond Doss was a Seventh-Day Adventist (a Christian who believes the sabbath is Saturday instead of Sunday) who decides to join the Army as a combat medic (because he wants to save lives instead of take them). However, his training requires him to learn how to use a rifle, which he refuses to do. His refusal to hold a weapon forms the main conflict of the film. This is a spoiler-free review, so I won’t go into the specific reasons why Doss refuses to hold a weapon (although it’s connected to the 6th biblical commandment of ‘thou shalt not kill’).

Firstly, I must mention that the writing, filmmaking, and acting are all marvellous. The violence in this film is gory, but not too gory. Vince Vaughn gives an especially great performance as the sergeant of Doss’s unit (this is helped by the character being semi-comedic). IMO, the best part of the film is when Doss saves the life of a wounded Japanese soldier, because it shows that he regards the Japanese soldiers as human (and not as the ‘enemy’, contrary to war propaganda).

However, there are three quotations from this film that socialists would take exception to:

1. Early on, Doss’s brother joins the army (to serve in WW2) much to the disappointment of their parents; especially their father who served in the First World Slaughter and lost all his friends in that conflict. In that scene, their mother mentions the 6th commandment to his brother, to which he replies: ‘It’s not killing if it’s a war’.
2. When Doss is explaining to his superior officer why he refuses to hold a weapon (because of the 6th commandment), the latter replies: ‘Most people take that to mean don’t commit murder’.
3. Finally, in that same scene, the superior officer says: ‘What we’re fighting is worse than Satan’. A socialist response to the first two quotations is that killing is killing (it doesn’t matter whether it’s sanctioned by the state or not). With regards to the third quotation, I would understand (in a way) where he was coming from if they were fighting against Nazi Germany, but to call the Japanese worse than Satan is blatant brainwashing.

In conclusion, despite the war propaganda, this is a good film about an incredibly brave man who did the right thing but for the wrong reason.

Matthew Shearn

50 Years Ago: Second thoughts (2009)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Yesterday’s Enemy” is a recently-produced British film about the British army fighting the Japanese in Burma during the last war. A review in the Daily Herald (14.9.59) describes a sequence in it: —

“A British captain .   .   . has  captured an informer who, he believes, has vital knowledge of a forthcoming Japanese attack. He threatens the informer with death, but the informer thinks the captain is bluffing and refuses to talk. The captain picks two villagers at random and orders them to be shot. The informer still refuses to talk. The villagers are shot—and then the informer breaks down. The captain has his information.”

The captain follows up his murder of two innocent villagers by having the informer shot, as well.

Remembering the propaganda with which we were spoon-fed in the last war, about how we were fighting for decency and humanity against the brutality of the other side, you might think that nothing like this could ever have been done by anyone in the British army. But not a bit of it. Major-General A. J. H. Snelling, who was with the 14th Army in Burma said: “I believe incidents like this did happen during the grim retreat.” General Sir Douglas Gracey said: “I heard of similar incidents . . . These awkward situations did arise.” Major-General H. L. Davies said: “This film is absolutely real and authentic.” A fourth high-ranking officer, General Sir Robert Mansergh, was due to speak the film’s praises at its New York premiere.

Very honest of them, now, fourteen years after the war has ended. And no one alleges that war can be fought with clean hands. But why did the politicians and generals tell us throughout the war that all the brutality was on the other side?

(From “The Passing Show” by Alwyn Edgar, Socialist Standard, December 1959.)

It's that man again (1952)

Film Review from the September 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

As an alternative heading we could have chosen “The Man Who Won the War” or to give the film its real title “The Fall Of Berlin." A local paper advertising the film writes, “ he most stupendous and sensation packed film ever screened." “A Russian film with English sub-titles." “Eighty cameramen lost their lives to get these pictures. Come and see what life is like behind the Iron Curtain. Come and see a faithful representation of Mr. Joseph Stalin. Come and see the miserable end of the once great Adolf Hitler and his Bride of a few hours, Eva Braun. Superbly photographed in a new process—Agfa Colour. You've never seen anything so terrific and magnificent before."

If this lot doesn't make you vomit, then you are no socialist. The film is prefaced by a statement pointing out that the freedom of speech which we enjoy enables us to show such a film in England. Evidently the authorities seem to have some doubts that in Russia considerable hesitancy would arise before a similar American or English film could be shown there.

The technique of production is excellent, the colouring and also the filming, which all shows that Russia has been an able pupil of America in this respect, but the general theme is indeed more childish than most American films, and even they can stoop precious low when required.

If you have any doubts who won the war, then see this film, and it will prove beyond dispute that Generalissimo Joseph Vissarionovitch Stalin was the man! The story opens with a metal worker who broke the world's record for smelting iron. As a result he was sent for by no less a person than Stalin himself. The great man (Stalin we are now referring to and not the iron worker), was digging his garden when the record breaker was led to him by one of his commissars. When the worker saw the “Fuehrer of all Russia " he was so frightened with embarrassment that he tried to run away; but the masterly way and comradely manner in which Stalin shook hands with the simple iron worker, soon put the latter at ease in a way no other human individual could do it.

Then they adjourned for a meal, and round the table was Molotov, Voroshilov, Kalinin, Beria (although it was not stated that he was chief of the G.P.U., now called the N.K.V.D.). The worker then told these “bosses” how he was determined to work even harder and smash further records—and he showed surprise that this met with their approval.

Things then shifted to personal matters as if to display Stalin's greatness in his supreme simplicity, and our iron puddler told Stalin that he intended to get married. The great Stalin did not hesitate to give him some fatherly and friendly advice, as if to demonstrate his authority in this field.

Then the war clouds broke, and after the usual array of flashes, smoke, bangs and blood intended to portray war in all its savagery, our hero loses his comrades one by one until practically he alone is left to hoist the red flag over the Reichstag. He had fought all the way from Stalingrad to Berlin and was fighting his way through the Reichstag when one of his colleagues fell wounded in the chest. Another comrade picked him up and put his hand into his tunic pulling out a handkerchief soaked in blood. The latter with the handkerchief in his outstretched hand was himself a few moments later shot dead, but in his hand continued to hold the bloodstained handkerchief outstretched like a God-given signal and in such a melodramatic way which could occur nowhere but on the films. Please rise and sing :—

“ We'll raise the scarlet banner high !

Beneath this flag we'll live or die !

Tho' cowards jeer, and traitors sneer 1 

We'll keep the red flag flying here ! ! "

Hitler and his gang, Goering, Goebells, Jodi, Keitel, Rundstedt, etc., are clearly portrayed, although it is a little strange to English ears to hear them all speaking in Russian with occasional “Mein Herr's." These guys produce some laughs from the audience from those who could not have laughed at the Great Stalin nonsense. Churchill and Roosevelt are depicted around the table at Yalta, but are so outshone by Stalin's splendour and greatness, and the depth of his remarks, that one scarcely notices them. England only gets one mention in the film, and America is of course played down, not as an ally, but as a power with which the Germans were trying to co-operate, and who were leaving all the fighting for the Russians to do. Towards the end the orders for the German army are to take no notice of the Americans coming in the back door, but to keep the Russians out at all costs!

Then comes the splendid climax which all “stupendous” films must have. Victory is achieved by Stalin (assisted to a small degree by the Red army). They celebrate in Berlin; releasing the Russian prisoners, dance, sing and shout (although nobody has a drink). One would think with all the excitement and shouting that somebody would get thirsty. But still film producers can miss things, or is it that the Russians don’t drink ?

Then what do you think happens ? Yes, it does, and right in the centre of Berlin on the day of victory. Our hero meets his girl friend who was carried off by the Nazis and had just been released so that they can by accident bump into one another again. And then what do you think happens next, you could never guess. Yes, sure enough the Great Generalissimo Joseph Vissarionovitch Stalin himself swoops down from the sky like an angel, but in an aeroplane, and gets out in the middle of the celebrating crowds. They surround him in a large and orderly circle without having to be kept back by police or soldiers. They carried many large photos of him about 20ft square (Gaud knows how they got them there so quickly)—and boy do they give him a greeting for winning the war for them.

Now comes the final climax which brings tears to your eyes or loosens your bowels according to your diathesis. The hero and his girl friend are seen by the benevolent eyes of Stalin, and Stalin remembers him after all those years. The girl runs forward apparently recognizing the great man, and wants to hug him—yes, a simple school teacher actually embraces a being who has come as near to a God as is possible. It all reminds us of the words of Jesus, “suffer little children to come unto me." Well what else do you expect when a modern capitalist state goes all out for the Great Man idea. Had Hitler won and Moscow fallen, practically everything in the film could have been retained, but of course reversed. Oh pot, why do you keep calling the kettle black ?

Horace Jarvis.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1951)

Film Review from the April 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

Any work of art which presents the truth about modern war is a rarity, and therefore Socialists should view the film “All Quiet on the Western Front” with particular interest. Made in 1930, directed by Lewis Milestone, it is based on Remarque’s famous novel of the 1914-1918 war as seen through the eyes of the ordinary German soldier.

The film opens in 1914, amid the patriotic fervour of the first days of the war. Whilst a military band blares outside a school, we see a group of youths inside all eagerly clamouring to join the army. Only one of their number tries to make a stand against them, but afraid of being called a coward, he reluctantly joins them, bewildered and terrified.

A brilliant sequence follows of the training of these volunteers, and here Milestone shows us how each individual is gradually converted into an automaton in uniform. This is one of the key points of the film, and is developed later in the battle scenes.

After a period in the trenches, where they get their first shattering experience of modern war, these youngsters retire behind the lines for a rest. Here the film becomes most interesting and outspoken. Whilst the soldiers are wolfing their rough food, they discuss the war and its causes. Some of the men think they are fighting because of the natural wickedness of the enemy, whilst others do not know why they are at war at all. One by one they speak, and we realize that all these men have been led blindly into a holocaust they do not understand. Eventually one of them says that the politicians and financiers are to blame, and that they should be the ones to do the fighting. This whole scene is most movingly and truthfully presented.

The greatest sequence of the film follows—the famous “Charge Across the Trenches.” The French attack, and move in hordes across No Mans Land, mown down by the German gunfire. The camera moves along the German trench, looking out on the advancing infantry, and with superb cutting and camera movement, Milestone shows us the ghastly carnage. We are made to feel that all these figures, the oncoming French, the Germans, the machine-gunners, the soldiers in the terrible fight with bayonets and bare fists, are not individuals, but a mass of men converted into brute animals, acting as animals do. A French soldier runs up to the barbed wire and places his hands on it, preparatory to leaping over. A shell bursts, and when the smoke clears, we see just a pair of hands dangling on the wire. The Germans are pushed back, but counter-attack. Now we are in the French trenches, and the camera moves along in the. opposite direction, showing the slaughter of the German troops. In this way is shown the link between the German and French soldiers, that they are really brothers.

The rest of the film is devoted to the deepening horror felt by the German troops, in particular the principal character (played by Lew Ayres). He is at first shown as an idealistic boy, but at the end he becomes an embittered man, revolted by his experience.

The film naturally suffers from the inexperience of the actors, unskilled in the then new sound-film technique. This is especially true of Lew Ayres, noticeably in the tragic scene with his mother, and also when he is trapped in a shell hole with a dying French soldier.

Despite these faults, “All Quiet on the Western Front” is a good film, and its recent general release is doubly welcome. It should remind any workers who may have doubts, what war means to them.

Derek R. Bowen

Casualties (1987)

USS Stark

From the July 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every day wars are fought. Every day the pressures inside this society erupt as some new battleground opens somewhere in the world. Every day capitalism puts new lives on the line to fight over land or minerals or markets. Or, as Ronald Reagan recently put it after the "accidental" rocket attack on a US frigate in the Gulf, "safeguarding the interests of the US and the free world in the Gulf, remains crucial to our national security and to the security of our friends throughout the world".

That sounds unequivocal but friends and relatives of the 37 American sailors who died on the USS Stark will be confused to find out that after the Iraqi Exocet attack, the US administration is portraying Iran, not Iraq, as the villain of the piece. As one Arab diplomat put it.

  the US said it was a mistake to sell arms to Iran, and now Iraq says it was a mistake that the frigate was attacked. Now the two sides are even. It's ironic but the only major consequence of this incident may be a warming of relations between Washington and Baghdad.

The lives were not lost in vain, however — the US armed presence in the Gulf exists (just as for any other country) in order to protect the small number of American-flagged vessels (owned by a small number of Americans) that need to use the Gulf.

There won't be a small number for much longer, hence the build-up in the US state's pressure. By mid-July, eleven oil tankers owned by the Kuwaiti Oil Tanker Company will be transferred to a Delaware-based corporation, putting them under US registration, under the US flag and. more importantly, entitled to the protection of the US navy. While the oil barons and their class shift from nation to nation, flying the flag of greatest convenience, workers of the world are expected to put up with the rhetoric of "the national interest" and to put down their lives, if necessary. In Mexico, lives are risked in trying to cross the border into Texas; in Ireland, workers have to enter a lottery to get a visa to work in the US; in America, Reagan announces the plan to test all immigrants for the HIV virus. At the same time as people are being barred from access to parts of the world, there's no problem, about becoming American if you are an oil tanker.

Of course, it's not just about oil. Capitalism produces many conflicts between nations. It produces many strategies, alliances and rivalries which cannot be ignored. Last December, Washington turned down a Kuwaiti request for help but following the news that the Russians were preparing to provide the naval escort, Washington quickly offered their help. Oil is just one example but it is part of a much bigger ballgame. and such small apparently insignificant disputes can easily turn into something much worse within days. Remember the Falklands War? But do you remember the almost comical news that preceded it, about the scrap-metal merchants from Argentina who had landed on something called South Georgia. Similarly, some small item on tonight's news about some far-off battle in some far-off place with a funny name could be the first kicks, the labour pains for the Third World War.

But whatever the battles are fought over, it’s not in the interests of the vast majority that are at stake. There's only a few people who stand to win or lose in times of war. The business pages of the papers make that quite clear:

 Shell, up 10p at 1011p. and BP. 11p ahead at 749. were the hot favourites as word filtered through that 2.000 lraquis had been killed in a new Iranian offensive. . .

(London Evening Standard. 9 January 1987)

Offensive is the word. And of course it's not the shareholders or the politicians who do the fighting. They stay safe in their offices rattling their sabres and letting others do the dying. According to diplomats in Washington, the deaths on the USS Stark, "provided President Reagan with a golden opportunity to demonstrate to the 'Gulf Cooperation Council' the US's determination to pay with its own lives to protect the oil lanes, despite the cooling in relations because of the American arms sales to Iran". (Guardian, 19 May 1987)

Where, for that matter, was Reagan when American teenagers were dying "to safeguard the interests of the US and the free world", during the Second World War? As someone who sometimes appears to welcome the prospect of a Third World War, he was in no hurry to appear in the last one — Reagan spent the war working for the FBI spying on any suspect communist subversives in Hollywood. One actor that he'd never need to worry about is Sylvester Stallone who has made millions out of encouraging American children to hate Russians in Rocky IV (like I-III). and to kill Vietnamese in Rambo (Rocky without boxing gloves). The actor though, doesn't quite match up to the wide range of characters he portrays: would Rambo have refused (as Stallone did last year) to travel to Cannes for the Film Festival, for fear of attacks from terrorists (or at least film critics)?

Recently our hero has been in Israel looking for a new location for an old script, as Rambo turns his attention to the Gulf after having finished off anyone with slanty-eyes in his previous film. But where was Stallone when the real Vietnam War was on, the one without the make-up and the blanks? Apparently Stallone saw out the war as a Physical Education instructor at a finishing school for rich young women in the jungles of Switzerland. Of course we've nothing against draft dodgers, quite the opposite in fact. But these are the people (and Stallone is just one of the more obvious) who encourage nationalism, who profit from warmongering, and who are all for dying for their country, just so long as it doesn't include them. But what of the sailors who did die in USS Stark? They died for precisely nothing — to help save Reagan's face after Irangate, to defend the American Oil Corporations.

There'll be another conflict in the Gulf, sooner or later. More names to be chiselled into the war memorial. But if the next conflict escalates, it won't just be the soldiers and sailors who suffer. We'll all be in the front line. If you put your trust in leaders, give up your power to politicians, and give up your imagination to film stars, the next thing you could find yourself giving up is your life.

Blood in the Mud (1958)

Film Review from the December 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

I don't like war films. But a Socialist will find much to interest them in "Blitzkrieg," even though it is the latest propaganda effort from Germany.

This film does not tell you anything about why the war arose. Nor does it ask how war can be avoided. But it gives, nevertheless, a devastating picture of what real war is like.

Propaganda films are interesting for one who does not take them at their face value, but recognises them as such. These pictures are made with the intention of making us think, and feel along certain lines. Knowing this beforehand, we can study the methods used by those who hope to influence us.

The makers of “Blitzkrieg” are “good German”a patriots. And, though they have used real news films from all countries in its production, their commentary (in English) is an alibi for their actions and for their defeat: Why did we Germans lose the war? Because of the mud and unending snow which trapped our tanks in the steppes of Russia: because the distances we had to cover were too vast; because of American superiority in production: because our allies—the Italian, the Hungarian and Rumanian troops—fought badly on the Eastern front; because Hitler was a very bad general, and a fanatic, whose strategy was disastrous: because he interfered constantly with the experts of the High Command: and because the Reds outnumbered our soldiers ten to one.

But—as we are incessantly reminded throughout the film—the brave German army and its heroic soldiers were never really defeated. They proved their worth . . . One German soldier is worth several Russians or Italians . . . one can almost hear the commentators say “ Wait till next time; when we try again—with the lessons in snow warfare which we have learnt at such a cost, and with the armed might of Britain and America behind us instead of against us—we shall beat the Russians.”

What caused the war? What were the interests at stake that persuaded the British and German ruling classes to spend so much money fighting each other?

For the Socialist the essential lies in what the film conveniently omits to tell us: How the German Capitalists, undoubtedly with the approval of a good many German people, exterminated millions of Russians, Jews, and Gypsies—and why; how they terrorised and tortured and murdered tens of thousands of German and other Communists, pacifists, and other opponents. It does not tell us of the huge numbers of patriotic men who returned from the war legless, armless, and worse; nor are we shown how the leaders of each country, Nazi and Labour Party leaders, Communists, Christians, Conservatives and Fascists enthusiastically urged the peoples of the world to butcher each other.

What we Socialists are opposed to are the implications that are behind these war films. They are an attempt to justify a past war in order to make a future once more acceptable and they do so by playing on the emotions of the filmgoer. The film is good. But the better it is the more dangerous it is to human well-being. War films are made to glorify war. The majority of those watching no doubt identify themselves with the hero, whether the hero be an individual or army. It is they who, in imagination, perform those deeds of valour, which stripped of their glory, are nothing but killing and terror. This picture is no exception to the rule, and is essentially similar in outlook to British and American war films.

War films reinforce thinking in terms of nationalism and the fake ideals for which fie various countries profess to fight. Films such as this help to prepare people for war, and educate them in its basic ideas: they justify the struggles of the ruling class and they present war as inevitable. And, when they shout “Égalité, Fraternité, Liberté! ” they mean “Infantry, Artillery and Cavalry."

H. L. R.

The Unknown Question (1958)

Film Review from the September 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recently many film critics and many picturegoers have clapped their hands at the end of films that deal with war; the war with all the dead and wounded, the war with all the bullets and shells. Somewhere in these films we find the hero mumbles something that clearly shows how “confused” or “unnecessary'’ wars really are. “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” “Paths of Glory,” and “The Young Lions” are a few examples. “The Unknown Soldier” (shown at the Academy) has more bullets fired, and more blood spilled than any of them. It also provides a record of war that is seemingly harsh but really quite accurate in its two-hour-plus description of the Finnish army's advance and subsequent retreat in Russia during 1941.

The director, Edvin Laine, employed a largely unprofessional cast in the making of this first war film from Finland. There are no real heroes, certainly not in the Hollywood U.S. Marine tradition, for it is obvious from just ten minutes of this film that however unflinching heroes may be they rarely live to see the medals handed out.

A handful of agricultural workers forming a National Service machine gun detachment are the centre of the film’s interest. They are shown from their first time in uniform as awkward recruits, to their final savage battles in retreat from the overwhelming Russian army.

Presenting a faithful picture of war it does not employ any of the patriotic devices usual to most war films. Most noticeable is the absence of the enemy—the Russians. They are seen here and there marching or advancing as a body, but never are they identified as the aggressors by means of propagandist tricks showing the enemy as the rapers, monsters, and barbarians which is also common to war films. A typical example of the portrayal of the Russians is a marching column in the snow, vague figures in heavy uniforms. Two Finns sit behind a machine gun ready to fire upon the unsuspecting soldiers; one speaks, “If that bastard has a maker, start forgiving his sins now, and quickly!" This sums up the attitude of the film to the enemy.

Finns are not shown as brave and relentless fighters, everyone of them living proof of the term “plucky little Finland.” Many of them are shown as fools and cowards, two of them are shot for indiscipline.

A bitter humour pervades the film. As the detachment force their way into Karelia then suffer severe losses during the retreat the soldiers become unmoved by violent death; it has no real significance..

In a review in the Observer (Sunday, June 13) C. A. Lejeune says: “‘The Unknown Soldier’ is a rough work with certain qualities of greatness, but to watch it is a great ordeal.”

No punches are pulled, and scenes are brutal and horrifying in an arms-and-legs-all-over-the-screen fashion.

The final conclusion is that all the killing, all the dying, all the shooting and all the fear has been something of a waste of time. Forlorn and pathetic the soldiers stand in the trees of a vast forest, last shots have been fired, the sun shines through the tree tops. Voices swell in a last triumphant anthem and everybody is glad because of peace. Peace that is silence and the sun shining—the only trite device used by the director.

“The Unknown Soldier” is a war film that shows men, who have worked all of their lives, suddenly fighting. They fight because they have to. But no reason is given for war, nobody knows why, because if they did they would not be fighting.

“For religion and home" the soldiers cry together, a scared group of men who yell because it gives them courage. They fight so they can go home to their families and work hard and forget about it. The violence and fear are to be forgotten, put aside, just as any attempt to think why the soldiers fought was to be put aside. They would have no other choice but to go home and work after the war, but they would not think of that either.

Robert Jarvis.

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

Film Review from the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

The title refers to a bullet. The film begins with the new recruits undergoing training to be soldiers. This takes the form of the most unbelievable verbal abuse - something in which the audience took delight. Furthermore, the recruits are told to give their rifles a name because that is the nearest they will get to a woman - women are seen only as objects of satisfaction. "You're useless without a rifle and the rifle is useless without you". 'Marines die. That's what we're here for, but the Marine Corps lives forever, and that means you live forever" they are told, to instill obedience and loyalty.

Like most dramatic films about the Vietnam war since Apocalypse Now, we only see the Vietnamese as cyphers and shadowy figures: prostitutes haggling over payments; evacuees fleeing, and snipers.

The voice-over is used, a common technique now in this type of film. The voice belongs to Private Joker, who wears a CND symbol along with the words "BORN TO KILL" on his helmet. When asked "How is the war going to be won if you wear a peace symbol?" by a high-ranking officer, he replies "I think I was trying to say something about quality".

In fact, in an interview the director said "We're never going to get down to doing anything about things that are really bad in the world until there is recognition within us of the darker side of our natures, the shadow side”.

The reasons for the war are never touched upon, but we see the effects on (young) soldiers. It is a powerful film showing war as it must be but we must get down to getting rid of the cause of war - capitalism - and not have to continue making conveyor-belt war films.

JJBT

Between the Lines: Whose Victory? (1991)

The Between the Lines column from the March 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

WHOSE VICTORY?

On Saturday, 9 February, while American and British bombers blew up their Baghdad targets and put the fear of bomb-blessing god into countless Iraqi kids, BBCI’s Going Live did its weekly "Press Conference" with Juliet Morris who had just returned from the Middle East where she was covering the war.

The Going Live programme allows teenagers to question the stars. Often the questions are more penetrating than the pompous political pundits ever dare ask. Sometimes they are naive. This week they were coated in fear.

How can we believe what we are told about the number of children killed and injured when the censors are at work? We can't, answered Morris - we just have to hope that the lies being told are not too great. Are Israeli kids scared of chemical missile attacks? Yes, very scared. How are they coping? Schools have been closed down - the difficulties of teachers putting gas masks on classes full of 30 six-year olds at a time are too great. Was she frightened when she was in the war zone? Yes.

Going Live is, by tradition, one of those jolly BBC shows put on to keep the kids smiling at the beginning of the long weekend. At the end of that week's show none of the children in the studio showed a tract of a smile. They had been dragged into the pit of fear which war pushes most of us in to. Going Live? But how long for?

SEEK TO BE DONE

On Sunday, 3 February your reviewer watched two films on TV. Both were about Justice. They could not have been more different. The Winslow Boy (Channel 4. 2pm) was about a false accusation made against an English public school boy. The boy’s father would not allow injustice to prevail and so sacrificed everything to see that his son's innocence was upheld. He took the matter to the House of Commons where the brilliant British defender of the law, Sir Henry Morton, made an impassioned plea for the right of the father to sue the Admiralty (who ran the boy's school). Of course, the parliamentarians were moved to a mass wave of sentimental awakening by the lawyer-MP’s speech and they voted for the case to be given a "fair trial". Then came the trial, with the sickening little goody-goody, Winslow up against the forces of the Mighty State. Needless to say, wee Winslow was in the Right, so the Mighty State had to concede defeat. Jolly good cricket, what! The film ends with the boy's father having been vindicated. But no, it was not he who was shown to be righteous in all of this, but the great English Legal System where Right is always done and, furthermore, seen to be done. What self-righteous little prats must have written, acted in and believed this film. What a smug and ridiculous act of complacent belief in good old English fairness this cinematic drivel symbolised.

Was the English parliament which decided to give young Winslow a "fair trial" the same kind as that which has refused persistently to free the Birmingham Six? Was the kindly judge out of the same stable as Lord Denning who is of the view that it would have been better for the Guildford Four to have been hanged, even though they have been found innocent?

The same night BBC1 showed Korczak, directed by Andrej Wajda. This was a film of painful truthfulness about one man's attempt to protect a group of orphan children from a full awareness of the brutalities of the Warsaw ghetto.

Korczak isolates the children in order to spare them a realisation of the grotesque social disorder which the fascist regime had imposed upon them. Perhaps he was wrong to deny them the truth; without a doubt, his intentions and actions, as depicted, were beautiful in their sincerity.

It was a film which refused to indulge in pathetic illusions about justice. In the end Korczak and his children are deported by train to meet their deaths in the gas ovens. There is a wonderful utopian moment close to the end of the film - a moment in which the carriage carrying the children falls off the end of the train and the young ones dance away to their freedom. It was one of the most moving scenes in any film ever. But Wajda, who is one of the finest film directors alive today, refused to allow viewers to roll back into the idiot's comfort of seeing justice done where it was not to be. The film ends with the stark information about the fate of Korczak and his children. It would have been a hardened viewer who did not weep.

THE MAD EMPIRE

First prize for the craziest moment of TV nationalism during the recent war lunacy goes to the half-time display during the US Superbowl. This was Nuremberg meeting Spielberg; George Bush on a big screen, and Fred Savage from The Wonder Years looking like junior commandant of the Florida Hitler Youth. Whoever devised this absurd pro-war pageant should be given an immediate offer of a star part in the sequel to Mel Brooks' The Producers. Bad taste? It’s the kind of thing that could make you wish that Columbus had never discovered America. And while the clowns performed workers died - needlessly.

Steve Coleman

The Passing Show: Dull and repetitive (1959)

The Passing Show Column from the December 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Well-being Promoters, Ltd.

In an article in The Times (Oct. 30th) a discovery was announced which should receive widespread publicity. This is it: “ The purpose of industry is to promote the well-being of the nation." Those of you who thought the purpose of industry was to make a profit out of the labour of the workers in it were, of course, quite wrong. Shareholders do not invest money in a company in order to receive interest on it, but merely to promote the well-being of the nation. Those accounts one reads in the newspapers, of company meetings at which shareholders shout and jeer, baying for the blood of the chairman merely because the company is paying less interest than was expected, are merely flagrant cases of misreporting. What actually happens, it is now clear, is that the chairman comes in and says: "Dear fellow-shareholders, this year we decided that the well-being of the nation would best be promoted by paying our workers the full value of what they produce. This, unfortunately, means that we didn't get any surplus value out of them, so there is no profit, and there will be no interest paid out on the shares." The shareholders then give three hearty cheers for the chairman, sing “Land of Hope and Glory." and go out to queue for jobs at the nearest Labour Exchange.

At any rate, that’s what must happen if we believe the Times article.

Dull and repetitive

The author of the article is said to write ” from experience as foreman and assistant works manager." But even this apologist for capitalism feels compelled to write: "Ninety-nine jobs out of a hundred in factories even today arc dull, repetitive, often physically very tiring, and frequently dirty." Socialists have said this over and over again: but when a man who goes so far in defence of capitalism as to deny even that it is run for profit, when he says this about the conditions of factory labour, then it must carry all the more weight.

Second thoughts

"Yesterday's Enemy" is a recently-produced British film about the British army lighting the Japanese in Burma during the last year. A review in the Daily Herald (14.9.59) describes a sequence in it: —

A British captain  . . .  has captured an informer who, he believes, has vital knowledge of a forthcoming Japanese attack. He threatens the informer with death, but the informer thinks the captain is bluffing and refuses to talk. The captain picks two villagers at random and orders them to be shot. The informer still refuses to talk. The villagers are shot and then the informer breaks down. The captain has his information.

The captain follows up his murder of two innocent villagers by having the informer shot, as well.

Remembering the propaganda with which we were spoon-fed in the last war, about how we were lighting for decency and humanity against the brutality of the other side, you might think that nothing like this could ever have been done by anyone in the British army. But not a bit of it. Major-General A. J. H. Snelling, who was with the 14th Army in Burma said: “I believe incidents like this did happen during the grim retreat.” General Sir Douglas Gracey said: “I heard of similar incidents . . . These awkward situations did arise.” Major-General H. L. Davies said: “This film is absolutely real and authentic.” A fourth high-ranking officer. General Sir Robert Mansergh, was due to speak the film’s praises at its New York premiere.

Very honest of them, now, fourteen years after the war has ended. And no one alleges that war can he fought with clean hands. Bill why did the politicians and generals tell us throughout the war that all the brutality was on the other side?

Morality first stop

To alleviate the distresses of the Indian people alter the recent disastrous floods in India, the Minister for Labour sent out a special train on a “character-building tour.” The Guardian (19.9.59). It carried fifty Himalayan holy men, complete with live hundred disciples. The leader of the party announced: We are going to our countrymen with a begging bowl, but not to ask alms but a pledge to give up vice.” The cause of the floods, then, is revealed: the gods arc punishing India for its “vice.” But whose vice? The floods could hardly have been expected to catch any Indian princes or industrialists, who would have their private planes available, and some of whom in any case would be sunning themselves at that time on the Riviera. It must be the vice of the Indian masses which caused all the trouble. The gods appear to have taken the ruling class view that all misfortunes arc caused by the troublesomeness of the rank-and-file. This won’t surprise Socialists, who have realised for a long lime that the gods arc hand-in-glove with the ruling class.

Well, there it is. The Indian Minister for Labour has seen where the trouble lies. If only the Indian peasants can lay off the palm-wine on Saturday nights, next year the Brahmaputra may stay within its banks!

Alwyn Edgar

Socialist Meeting in London: Peter Watkins' Culloden (2015)

'Culloden' (Film)

Sunday, 18 October 2015 - 6:00pm

Venue: The Socialist Party's premises, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN

Directions: About four minutes walk from Clapham North tube on the Northern line and three minutes walk from Clapham High Street station on the circular overground line

'Culloden', a film by Peter Watkins - running time 69 minutes. 

Introduction by Robert Worden with discussion afterwards

Peter Watkins will be 80 years of age in October 2015

"Culloden is a 1964 docudrama for BBC TV.  It portrays the 1746 Battle of Culloden that resulted in the British Army's destruction of the Scottish Jacobite rising of 1745 and, in the words of the narrator, "tore apart forever the clan system of the Scottish Highlands". Described in its opening credits as "an account of one of the most mishandled and brutal battles ever fought in Britain", Culloden was hailed as a breakthrough for its cinematography as well as its use of non-professional actors and its presentation of an historical event in the style of modern TV war reporting. The film was based on John Prebble's study of the battle."

Free admission and refreshments

See Also:

October 2015 Socialist Standard: Peter Watkins: A Revolutionary Film-Maker

Those War Films (1960)

From the January 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

War films, like Westerns, are always in fashion. From Hollywood and elsewhere, there flows a constant stream of films about heroism, cowardice, battles, bombings and butchery generally. So, at regular intervals, we sit transfixed in our cinema seats, while jet planes zoom overhead and the U.S. marines go in to finish off yet another bunch of anti-democratic savages. Satisfying? Maybe. Harmless? Improbable. But useful? Very rarely.

War is, after all, a serious subject. Yet, of the enormous number of films that have been made about war, one can count on one's fingers those which say something intelligent, useful or constructive about it.

Generally speaking, war films, like thrillers and westerns, follow well-defined patterns and fall into a few set groups. The commonest kind is the heroic battle-story with a slender plot and perhaps a little love interest. The hero, rugged and clean-living, goes into battle and, after inevitable setbacks, crushes the enemy practically single-handed. Sometimes he dies at the end, murmuring beautiful thoughts and accompanied by a celestial choir.

In these films the sort of thing that one remembers is, perhaps, Robert Taylor defending Bataan single-handed against hordes of Japs; or Veronica Lake gallantly walking into the enemy camp with a bosom loaded down with hand-grenades; and other similar epics of true-to-life bravery. Occasionally the story is more sophisticated and the background a little less false. But, basically, the same pattern is there—heroism, and the defeat of an evil enemy.

Why should one object to this ostensibly harmless kind of fairy tale? What is important is that the audience is expected to participate by identifying itself with the hero and the victorious army. It is objectionable for films to blatantly glorify the sordid business of killing. It is harmful to glamorise the slaughter of one's fellow-men. Above all, it is dangerous to suggest, as these films do, that war is inevitable and necessary and that "fighting for one's country" is a natural and desirable thing.

Another (and much smaller) category of films is the semi-documentary type, usually without love-interest, in which the portrayal of the fighting is much closer to reality. A few of these films have been extremely good, A Walk in the Sun, for instance, telling of one brief sortie by an American patrol in the Italian campaign. The Polish film Kanal is also worthy of mention, with its horrifying account of the crushing of the Warsaw uprising and the miserable and wretched deaths suffered by the survivors, either in the sewers of Warsaw or at the hands of the Germans. It is interesting to see, however, that this otherwise admirable film makes no mention of the Russian army which stood outside Warsaw for weeks, allowing their "allies" to be butchered in the sewers. But, of course, one should not expect too much from film-makers in countries now dominated by their Russian "liberators."

Probably the best of this type of film is the Finnish film The Unknown Soldier, which portrays the tiny, ill-equipped Finnish army in its war against Russia. In this, war is stripped of glamour and adventure and shown for what it is—a brutal and fearful business. This kind of film may, and sometimes does, inspire a genuine horror of war an all that goes with it, which in itself is a good thing. However, as these films never put forward a positive point of view, or any alternative to war, the overall effect is to make people think that war is a terrible and terrifying thing, but also that it is necessary and justifiable in the right circumstances.

During the war, and shortly after, there was a spate of documentary films, most of them made by the Crown Film Unit. The intention was to boost morale and convince the public that our cause was just and that victory would inevitably come. Some of them were well-made (for example, Fires Were Started), and did at least give an unsentimental and fairly accurate picture of what went on in the war. Many documentaries, notably The March of Time series, held out extravagant promises of the wonderful world that was to be ours after the war, a world freed from economic disasters, international tension and all the unpleasant things that occurred before the war. This is one good reason why these films are never shown today.

Since the war, we have had the opportunity of seeing documentaries that put the other side's point of view—Blitzkreig, for instance. Although the uniforms are different, the message is the same—"We are right and the enemy is wrong."

Another fairly common type of war-film is the prison-camp story, with the usual ingredients of escape, brutal punishment, cheerful and heroic prisoners and bullying prison-camp commanders. The pattern of these films is much the same as the heroic battle-epic. The prisoners attempt to escape because it is their duty to get back home to fight again. So insistent is the escape theme in films like The Wooden Horse and The Colditz Story and many others, that one gets the misleading impression that prison-camp life consisted of never-ending escape attempts, and that captured soldiers couldn't get back in the front line quick enough. Some of these films have depicted revolting brutality, not so much from a desire for authenticity, but rather to encourage national hatreds. One of the few prison-camp films to explore the possibilities of genuine human contact between captors and captives was La Grande Illusion, a French film, which itself was made long before the Second World War.

The one comes to the very few films about war which put forward a clear point of view—that war is unjustifiable, perhaps, or that war is harmful to all who take part in it. One or two even suggest that the war leaders and officers are not disinterested saints, but people with a vested interest in warfare. Attack, for example, did this badly, by showing the harm caused by a fanatical officer, but negatived this point by suggesting that "good" officers would have solved the problem. Paths of Glory, on the other hand, presented a picture of army officers scheming and competing like business men, and the disastrous effect this had on the men at the bottom, many of whom died as a result.

The films where a humanist or pacifist view is presented are few and far between. Apart from Paths of Glory, there is the old All Quiet on the Western Front, with its sympathetic portrayal of the German soldiers in the First World War. It had the temerity to suggest that German soldiers were human, too, with the same wants and desires, and cutting the same poor figure in the muddy trenches as their counterparts on the allied side. La Grande Illusion put forward a similar point of view, and exposed "the great illusion" of national enmity.

The result of the tally is not a very encouraging one—a handful of worthwhile films: a negative but accurate ones; and an enormous number of misleading, sentimental and harmful films glorifying war, extolling films, and justifying cruelty and murder. Cynics will say that the public are only getting what they deserve. Maybe, but this is only half of the story. Films themselves are the outcome of social forces, and at the same time help to fashion the climate of opinion in which they appear. So it is that Capitalism, a harmful and irrational system, produces the harmful and irrational by-product—war. This engenders the phony justifications for national enmities, which war films reflect and help to bolster up.

This process is endless—post-war situations produce new justifications and new hatreds, which themselves help to make new wars possible. The only thing that will stem this tide is knowledge and criticism. Working people are gradually coming to realise that wars are not glamorous affairs, that battles are not mere backdrops for heroes, and that national hatreds are not natural and praiseworthy.

One hopes that this trend will be reflected in the cinema, and that if films do deal with war, they will approach it in a critical, constructive and conscious way. Perhaps this is expecting too much of Capitalism, but if the cinema doesn't catch up, one at least knows that the working class eventually will.

Albert Ivimey