Robert Tanitch reviews the latest DVDs
It Happened Here (BFI). Begun when Kevin Brownlow was 18, and 8 years in the making, it is the most ambitious amateur film ever made, an extraordinary achievement. Living as we do in the age of Donald Trump and fake news and alternative facts, its warnings about the dangers of Fascism, could not be timelier. What would have happened if Nazi Germany had invaded England in 1940 and defeated her? Would we have resisted or accepted and collaborated? A nurse (Pauline Murray) wants to remain apolitical and lead a normal life but finds she can’t. Sebastian Shaw (the only professional actor in the film) has a key line: “The appalling thing about Fascism is you have to use Fascists methods to get rid of it.”
Brownlow and his co-director Andrew Mollo were accused of being anti-Semitic because they allowed genuine Fascists to speak their repellent views about Jews. The notorious euthanasia debate, a key moment and cut at its premiere release in 1963, has now been restored. The film has a documentary authenticity. German soldiers are seen marching in familiar London locations. A masterstroke is to use the voices of well-known announcers, notably Frank Phillips in the brilliant fake propaganda newsreel. The summary killing of German soldiers who have surrendered is chilling.
Filmworker (Dogwoof) is a documentary tribute to Leon Vitali who gave up acting and sacrificed his life to serve the great director Stanley Kubrick for 30 years from Barry Lyndon onwards and on to The Shining and Full Metal Jacket, and up to Eyes Wide Shut and Kubrick’s death in 1999. He was the his factotum 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. The pressure was intense. Working for a perfectionist (with a foul temper), the toll is visible. Vitali looks much older than the 70-year-old he is. But to be Kubrick’s closest collaborator was what he wanted and he continues to oversee the digital restoration of his legacy.
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