It Happened Here (1965)
Kevin Brownlow’s film about the Nazi invasion of Britain was conceived when he was just 18 and took him and his collaborator, Andrew Mollo, over eight years to make. A very early example of ‘guerrilla’ film-making, it was shot on 16mm film with a cast and production crew who were mainly volunteers.
Brownlow recalls shooting a sequence of Nazi soldiers in Trafalgar Square and just managing to finish it before he was arrested. Given these restrictions, it’s a staggering achievement, and what it lacks in polish it more than makes up for in its thoughtful and thought-provoking script.
Telling the story of Pauline, a nurse, it puts forward the thesis that the British, with their love of order and discipline, would have probably made good collaborators if the Germans had actually invaded.
Pauline wants to help and so, with the best intentions, she joins the British version of the Nazi party. This launches her on a moral journey in which she finds it harder and harder to reconcile her decision with the things she witnesses. She finds an answer at the end but the film suggests that it may be illusory.
There are no heroes in this film and no ‘right’ side, only moral questions. This makes it one of a very few genuine ‘anti-war’ films.
THE WORLD OF THE STORY
(see technique notes: “The World of The Story“)
The film had huge trouble getting distribution in Britain on release and it’s not difficult to see why. It attacks one of the basic myths that has sustained this country: that the British people would have resisted fascism at any cost because there was something fundamentally different in their character from other European nations.
For British viewers, the impact of this film also comes from its feeling of familiarity. It resembles a lot of propaganda wartime films made in Britain with its images of plucky Brits carrying on their daily business. But this is an inversion of that world; one in which the propaganda elements have been subverted to give a very different message.
In the sequence here, you get something of that impact in a visual form. The images are familiar but the setting is not, and the total effect is rather unsettling.
Scene 2
This second scene happens towards the end of the film and adopts the same approach of showing the familiar out of context but for very different purposes.
In this sequence, the protagonist Pauline escapes to the country after suffering a minor breakdown. Everything appears idyllic and she thinks she has finally found a refuge.
© David Clough 2010