Churchill and the Movie Mogul

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.