User reviews

This well considered, crisp documentary shows the nexus between Winston Churchill's screenwriting efforts for Alexander Korda and his more prominent political career. It illustrates how the development of nationalism is a necessary precursor to war. Of course, today, television is a more ubiquitous and unremitting propaganda, but this is a valuable glance at the more arty forms circa1940. Clips, interviews and photographs are well chosen.

Dilly Barlow narrates this story of the relationship between Winston Churchill and Alexander Korda. before his political career, Churchill had worked for the british producer Korda to write and describe military scenes and battles. later, when Churchill became prime minister, he used Korda to make films in hollywood showing the true picture of world events and to try to get america to assist britain in the war effort. so many people, first in England, then in the U.S. had thought it wise to keep out of the war, that it could be ignored. the reality of germany's power and darkness propelled Churchill to power, and he made use of korda as he could. British author Stephen Fry steps in now and then to highlight milestones. it's very well done, with plenty of archive footage. showing on turner classics. directed by John Fleet, this appears to be his first full length film.

Interesting look at war monger Winston Churchill's use of media to get as many of Empire's farmboys pointlessly killed fighting somebody (turned out to be the Hun).

Churchill was, I dunno, bored after being disgraced by his blunders at the Dardanelles (aka Gallipoli) in The Great War. He hadn't seen enough of his soldiers slaughtered, I guess. So he was boning for sequel with Germany from the back benches of the English Parliament in the 1930s.

He hooked up with Hungarian movie-making refugee Alexander Korda, who had reinvented himself as a proper English gentleman. Korda was responsible for a few barely disguised propaganda films that helped to whip the LImeys into a fighting frenzy. I guess it worked. Churchill got his war to get more of his - and more regrettably - the British Empire's farmboys pointlessly killed on European soil.

Meanwhile, Americans mostly hated Britain and didn't want any part of Churchill's war lust. The catchphrase was ''America First." Ring any bells? Sadly, the Korda/Churchill tagteam - if we are to believe this documentary - made Lady Hamilton starring fake husband/wife Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh.

Apparently it worked. Many dead American farmboys ensued.

Cross-dressing civil-rights abuser J. Edgar Hoover had his FBI investigate Hollywood propaganda in general, and Korda in particular. Probably what today we call ''controlled opposition" since it didn't hold back America's authoritarian war-monger Franklin Roosevelt from maneuvering the U. S. into the killing fields in Europe or Asia.

None of this surprised me. I mean, who doesn't watch The Scarlet Pimpernel, That Hamilton Women, Fire Over England or The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, etc., and fail to realize that they are pro-war propaganda? Nevertheless, the valuable lesson is that media in general and Hollywood in particular have a lot to answer for. Keep that in mind when Tom Hanks, Stephen Spielberg, CNN, MSNBC, the NY Times or Washington Post are beating the war drum against (2022 enemy du jour is Russia but it's always gonna be somebody) or cranking out yet another film celebrating American soldiers' heroism in battle.

We are dupes.

I much enjoyed the premise of this movie: that Churchill used his relationship with the great English film producer and director, Alexander Korda, to get Korda, already an English patriot, to make particularly patriotic films during World War II, especially here in the U.S. to help FDR overcome Lindbergh's isolationism and bring the U.S. into the war to help England. (Sorry about the length of that sentence.)

What I particularly liked here was the use of Lindbergh's speeches urging isolationism/neutrality. He is remembered today for his heroic flight across the Atlantic in 1927, but his anti-semitic isolationism should not be forgotten.

What I liked less was the cursory examination of the films Korda made during the war. The movie is only 60 minutes long, so there would have been plenty of time to look at his war movies in greater depth. Even if Churchill's request only applied to *That Hamilton Woman*, more time looking at it in detail would have been appreciated.

For what it's worth....

Didn't think there were any fresh slants left on Churchill, but this doc found one - and a fascinating untold tale it is too. Who knew our Winston was a wannabe screenwriter? Well worth a watch.

It was intriguing to learn about the symbiotic relationship between Winston Churchill and Alexander Korda in the 1930's, and at a high-level this documentary summarizes it reasonably well, with old film footage and interviews. Churchill was unpopular for his views criticizing the soft treatment of the rising Nazi threat but understood how cinema could be used to sway public opinion, and Korda would make a series of historical dramas with clear messages about Britain's need to militarize and stand up for itself. As one person in the film aptly put it, as Reifenstahl was to Hitler, Korda was to Churchill. Meanwhile, isn't it ironic that America, the land of free speech, would haul Korda before an un-American activities committee and grill him over the messages in his films, which they and J. Edgar Hoover viewed as dangerous propaganda? The documentary falls short in not going in to enough depth in many of its areas, such as how the rest of those interviews went and what Korda's answers were. It also tends to fall into hero worship over the two men, without asking any of the harder questions about them, Churchill in particular. To be truly satisfactory it would have needed to be fleshed out more, but as it is, it taught me a few things, and it was worth an hour.

Minimally interesting and, to put it with British understatement, the importance of "That Hamilton Woman" to the US/British alliance seems exaggerated. Still, there are some things presented that I didn't know such as Churchill turning to screenwriting to make money (boy, he musta been desperate!) and Korda being investigated by Hoover. Give it a C.

Mogul (noun) informal an important or powerful person, especially in the motion picture or media industry.

The IMDb calls this documentary about how Churchill and Alexander Korda worked hand in glove to create propaganda movies "How Britain's wartime leader and its only ever movie mogul changed the course of history."

Really? Only ever mogul? What then are we to make of people like Michael Balcon, or Cecil Hepworth or Charles Urban? Korda -- eventually, it is admitted, an emigrant -- lands in Britain and immediately starts making very English movies? As if he hadn't been a film maker in his native Hungary, hadn't worked in Britain since the 1920s, with an earlier sojourn in Hollywood?

Mind you, I am not disputing the position of the documentarians here; with all the claims about Nazi propaganda, there's little doubt that the British were great movie advocates for themselves, starting in the First World War, when the had Rudyard Kipling in charge, and imported D. W. Griffith to shoot films. I just wish people wouldn't make supposedly serious films that play so dismissively with the facts that do not suit their main narrative.