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Operation Sea Lion \u2013 this was the name the Nazis gave their plan to carry out the first successful conquest of Britain since 1066. The British authorities tried to alleviate the population\u2019s fear by producing propaganda films that appealed to their solidarity and told them to keep a watchful eye. To this effect, filmmakers Humphrey Jennings and Harry Watt titled their short film: \u201cLondon Can Take It!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although the Blitz, the aerial attacks on London and strategic targets, had already ceased by 1942, the fear of invasion, as film historians Anthony Aldgate and Jeffrey Richards state in \u201cBritain Can Take It\u201d, had by no means disappeared given the fall of Singapore and patrol of three German warships in the English Channel. Alberto Cavalcanti, till then known primarily as documentary filmmaker, was hired to film \u201cWent the Day Well?\u201d for Ealing Studios, which for their part had depended mostly on comedies for their success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The premise of the film, which foresees a futuristic scenario that never comes about, is quickly told: Sixty German paratroopers land in the fictional village of Bramley End. At first undetected, they pretend to be English soldiers, but then round up the local villagers and hold them captive in the village church while they prepare the invasion by destroying the telecommunications system. In this scenario the British inhabitants are above all resilient \u2013 even an older lady turns into a sprightly resistance fighter who is not afraid to throw pepper in the face of a German with a mouthful of bratwurst, and then kill him with a hatchet. The advantage she has gained through this act is immediately erased by the gossiping telephone girls who fail to put through her call, thus giving the contemporary audience a new meaning to the British government\u2019s propaganda slogan: \u201cCareless talk costs lives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In other words, it is also important to protect the lives of the rural population. With the practised eye of the documentarist, Cavalcanti presents a broad view of life in the countryside without becoming sentimental: he describes such minor social interactions in the village as walking to church or to the pub, thus showing what is at stake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Cavalcanti\u2019s film, the British are good-natured, simple folk, who can hardly imagine that the guests are not Englishmen, but rather German soldiers or possibly collaborators from their own ranks \u2013 until some women from the village get wise to the false identity of the intruders through a combination of intelligence and good fortune.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this way, \u201cWent the Day Well?\u201d is a warning not to ignore the threat stemming from members of the \u201cfifth column\u201d, represented in the treacherous figure played by Leslie Banks. Some twenty years later, the topic of the sympathy that some members of British society felt for National Socialism is again taken up in the film \u201cIt Happened Here\u201d, a sympathy that could quickly turn into collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Operation Sea Lion \u2013 this was the name the Nazis gave their plan to carry out the first successful conquest of Britain since 1066. The British authorities tried to alleviate the population\u2019s fear by producing propaganda films that appealed to their solidarity and told them to keep a watchful eye. To this effect, filmmakers Humphrey Jennings and Harry Watt titled their short film: \u201cLondon Can Take It!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although the Blitz, the aerial attacks on London and strategic targets, had already ceased by 1942, the fear of invasion, as film historians Anthony Aldgate and Jeffrey Richards state in \u201cBritain Can Take It\u201d, had by no means disappeared given the fall of Singapore and patrol of three German warships in the English Channel. Alberto Cavalcanti, till then known primarily as documentary filmmaker, was hired to film \u201cWent the Day Well?\u201d for Ealing Studios, which for their part had depended mostly on comedies for their success. The premise of the film, which foresees a futuristic scenario that never comes about, is quickly told: Sixty German paratroopers land in the fictional village of Bramley End. At first undetected, they <\/p>\n\n\n\n pretend to be English soldiers, but then round up the local villagers and hold them captive in the village church while they prepare the invasion by destroying the telecommunications system. In this scenario the British inhabitants are above all resilient \u2013 even an older lady turns into a sprightly resistance fighter who is not afraid to throw pepper in the face of a German with a mouthful of bratwurst, and then kill him with a hatchet. The advantage she has gained through this act is immediately erased by the gossiping telephone girls who fail to put through her call, thus giving the contemporary audience a new meaning to the British government\u2019s propaganda slogan: \u201cCareless talk costs lives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, it is also important to protect the lives of the rural population. With the practised eye of the documentarist, Cavalcanti presents a broad view of life in the countryside without becoming sentimental: he describes such minor social interactions in the village as walking to church or to the pub, thus showing what is at stake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Cavalcanti\u2019s film, the British are good-natured, simple folk, who can hardly imagine that the guests are not Englishmen, but rather German soldiers or possibly collaborators from their own ranks \u2013 until some women from the village get wise to the false identity of the intruders through a combination of intelligence and good fortune.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this way, \u201cWent the Day Well?\u201d is a warning not to ignore the threat stemming from members of the \u201cfifth column\u201d, represented in the treacherous figure played by Leslie Banks. Some twenty years later, the topic of the sympathy that some members of British society felt for National Socialism is again taken up in the film \u201cIt Happened Here\u201d, a sympathy that could quickly turn into collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cKeep calm and carry on\u201d: With this slogan from 1939, the British government appealed to the population for perseverance in face of the war. But the slogan also seems to refer to what many of the characters in \u201cIt Happened Here\u201d are opportunistically thinking when they find themselves in a fascist England after the conquest of the United Kingdom by the Nazis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of them is Pauline, an Irish nurse who more out of an instinct for survival than ideological conviction joins the Immediate Action Organisation, a paramilitary medical corps, and unwittingly gets involved in a euthanasia programme, whose feigned aims she begins to question after encountering an old schoolmate, now a resistance fighter. She gradually grows into her historical and individual responsibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Andrew Mollo and Kevin Brownlow\u2019s directorial debut, whose eight-year production history would deserve a blog of its own, met with mixed reactions when it was released. After all, it presents an alternative vision of history that challenges the image that Britons had of themselves. The greatest irritation was found in seven minutes of the film that were deleted after its release. In these scenes, which were spontaneously improvised, members of the Union of British Fascists take the stage to spread their dehumanising ideology. In his book \u201cHow It Happened Here\u201d, Brownlow defended the decision to film the scenes, as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n No film since the end of the war had given National Socialists carte blanche<\/em> to express their opinions with the result that few people had a clear idea of what they stood for, or of the insidious threat they represented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt Happened Here\u201d explores fascism as a phenomenon of the masses and less as the result of gifted rhetoricians and ideologists. And the film itself is not free from a fascist aesthetic, as film critic David Robinson remarked:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a way, the filmmakers themselves are seduced. They communicate their own delight in the uniforms and military show, in the spectacle of an admirably staged Nazi torchlight funeral. [\u2026] This admirably achieved, admirably intentioned film could be hot stuff for an audience with the wrong preconditioning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is precisely the starting point of \u201cIt Happened Here\u201d, for like \u201cWent the Day Well?\u201d, it shines a light on the Nazi sympathies of some Britons. While the latter film formulates its observations in the present time, the former work seeks answers to today\u2019s questions in the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Zeughauskino is showing both films within the framework of the series \u201cRoads not Taken. Alternative historical narratives in film\u201d. The series presents feature films that explore alternative courses of history and take up questions examined in the eponymous exhibition in the Pei Building.<\/p>\n\n\n [1] For a long time \u201cThey Came in Khaki\u201d was the working title of Cavalcanti\u2019s film, but in the end the producers decided to use an epitaph written by John Maxwell Edmonds: \u201cWent the day well? \/\/ We died and never knew. \/\/ But, well or ill, \/\/ Freedom, we died for you.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Filmographie:<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Went the Day Well? (GB 1942, Alberto Cavalcanti)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n It Happened Here (GB 1964, Kevin Brownlow, Andrew Mollo)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Bibliographie:<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Aldgate, Anthony \/ Richards, Jeffrey (1986): Britain Can Take It. The British Cinema in the Second World War<\/em>. Oxford: Blackwell.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/Went-the-Day-Well_web-1.jpg\")
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