It Happened Here
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| It Happened Here | |
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| Directed by | Kevin Brownlow Andrew Mollo |
| Produced by | Kevin Brownlow Andrew Mollo |
| Written by | Kevin Brownlow Andrew Mollo |
| Starring | Pauline Murray Sebastian Shaw Bart Allison Reginald Marsh |
| Music by | Anton Bruckner |
| Cinematography | Kevin Brownlow Peter Suschitzky |
| Editing by | Kevin Brownlow |
| Distributed by | United Artists |
| Release date(s) |  May 1966 August 8 January 9, 1967 May 25 August 18 |
| Running time | 97 min. |
| Country | UK |
| Language | English/German |
| Budget | $20,000 (estimate) |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
It Happened Here is a 1966 British film, set in an alternate history in which Nazi Germany successfully invades and occupies the United Kingdom during World War II.
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[edit] Production and staff
The film was directed by Kevin Brownlow, who later became a prominent film historian, and Andrew Mollo, who was to become a leading military historian. Brownlow developed the concept of the film when he was eighteen, in 1956. He turned to Mollo, a sixteen-year-old history buff, to help him with the design of costumes and sets. Mollo was intrigued by the project, and became his collaborator.
The film was in the making for the next eight years, which the Guinness Book of World Records (as of 2003) calls the longest ever production schedule. It was shot in black and white on 16 mm film, giving it a grainy, newsreel feel. The audio quality (and lighting) on the opening reel is rather poor, which makes the dialogue difficult to follow for the first few minutes. It had a cast of hundreds, all volunteers, with only two professional actors among them (Sebastian Shaw, Reginald Marsh).
The key role of Pauline, a nurse evacuated from Salisbury to London, was played by Pauline Murray, the Irish wife of a doctor in Wales. According to the IMDb website she was born in Dublin, Ireland, on 30 August 1922 and died on 31 December 1994 in Kingston, England. Her only other film credit is, according to the IMDb, playing the part of "Marion", an Englishwoman, in the award winning 1948 Danish war film Støt står den danske sømand (Perilous Expedition) - about Danish sailors in the service of the Allies, which was directed by pioneer Danish film-maker Bodil Ipsen and by Lau Lauritzen. This movie won the award for "best Danish film" at the 1949 Danish film critics event - Bodil Festen, the Danish "Oscars", held in Copenhagen, Denmark.
According to DVD Times, Murray worked as a doctor's receptionist. DVD Times says that it is "...interesting to compare her to other British leading ladies of the time", in that the 1960s "‘Free Cinema’ movement spill[ed] over into features and a British New Wave...[led to]...films such as A Taste of Honey and Poor Cow." DVD Times points out that "...Tony Richardson’s Woodfall Film Productions (central to the new wave) stumped up the money to allow It Happened Here to be completed on a less amateur level, yet the results are quite different. Murray may share the resilience of a Rita Tushingham or Carol White, but she’s a tougher breed, altogether more human."
In a contemporary review of a showing of the film at the Little Carnegie theatre at 146 West 57th Street in New York City, published in the New York Times on August 9, 1966, titled "If the Finest Hour Had Failed: Little Carnegie Offers 'It Happened Here' Occupation of England by Nazis Depicted", Bosley Crowther wrote "The acting by unfamiliar people is beautifully natural and restrained, particularly that of Pauline Murray in the principal role. Through her human and subtle generation of an ungrudging sympathy, one becomes involved in her dilemma and is caught up all the way in the despair, uncertainty and terror of her experiences."
Stanley Kubrick, who was intrigued by the project, donated film stock from Dr. Strangelove to Brownlow to help him finish the film. Most of the equipment used in the production was borrowed. Director Tony Richardson helped to pay for the final production. Though the cast was almost entirely amateur, It Happened Here helped to launch the career of its cinematographer, Peter Suschitzky, who went on to work on such films as The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Empire Strikes Back.
Brownlow later published the story of how the film got made under the title How it Happened Here. The book has been reissued in updated form in 2005(UK) and 2007(US)
[edit] Film content
The film opens with the statement: "The German invasion of England took place in 1940 after the retreat from Dunkirk". After months of fierce resistance the occupying forces manage to restore order largely supressing the resistance movement however due to pressure from the Eastern Front, most German troops are eventually removed from England, and the garrisoning of England is largely carried out by British volunteers to the German army.
Meanwhile the U.S. having entered the war stations its seventh naval fleet off Ireland and begins bombing raids on the South West Coast of England as well as supplying men and equipment to a resurgent partisan movement. Whether Ireland itself is occupied by the Americans or Germans or manages to remain neutral is not made clear.
The story focuses on an apolitical Irish district nurse, Pauline. Following an upsurge in partisan activity in her area, she is forcibly evacuated from her village by the Nazis and their collaborators, and witnesses an attack on the fascist forces by a group of British partisans during which a number of her friends from the village are killed in the crossfire. The attack, and more particularly the deaths, later influences her views and the decisions.
She is evacuated to London, where she reluctantly becomes a collaborator, joining the "Immediate Action Organisation" (IAO) a kind of quasi-paramilitary medical corps of the ruling fascist party of England. She is re-trained as an ambulance attendant of the IAO. As in Germany's National Socialist German Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP), the IAO is a highly paramilitary organization intent on standardisation and discipline. Although at first reluctant and intent on remaining apolitical, Pauline begins to show the effects of indoctrination in her behaviour. It is a reunion with old friends (an antifascist doctor and his wife) that gives Pauline pause and when she subsequently discovers they are harbouring an injured partisan she (somewhat reluctantly) agrees to help.
Gradually she learns more about the impacts of the Nazi occupation. She sees her friends arrested and sees racist treatment of the Jews under German rule. The discovery of her association with the antifascist couple by her superiors in the IAO leads to her demotion and transfer to another part of the country. A move which she actually welcomes at first as her new job appears to have less of the paramilitary trappings than the ambulance corps.
Towards the end of the film, Pauline discovers that she has unwittingly taken part in a euthanasia programme and killed a group of foreign slave labourers who have contracted tuberculosis (portrayed by real patients with tuberculosis). The film ends with Pauline being arrested after protesting and refusing to continue, but before she can be put on trial she is captured and agrees to work for the partisans as they retake England with the help of arriving American troops.
In the finale, Pauline tends wounded while, out of her view, British partisans execute a large group of Nazi collaborators from the British volunteer legion of the SS who had formally surrendered and laid down arms, reminiscent of the SS massacre of English villagers earlier in the film.
[edit] Release and criticism
After eight years of production, the film's initial release was stormy. Many people were upset by the idea that the villains in the story were not normally Nazis but their British collaborators. The film seemed to be saying that fascism can rise anywhere under the right circumstances, and that people everywhere could fall under its spell.
Research prior to the film from various Nazi-occupied territories (including the Channel Islands) suggested that this was indeed the case. Jewish groups protested the inclusion of seven minutes of footage of British postwar fascist leader Colin Jordan, speaking against the Jews and for euthanasia. In response, this was cut from the original release, though it was restored thirty years later, after Brownlow regained the rights to the film. Critics claim the inclusion of this material gives a platform to unapologetic neo-Nazis despite the film's strongly anti-Nazi theme.
[edit] Trivia
- Near the end of the film a partisan general is seen reading a newspaper which carries the headline "peace and liberation". The newspaper in this scene is actually a copy of the real-life Guernsey Evening Press published on Liberation Day.
- A number of the extras in the film were members of British science fiction fandom, and a portion was previewed at a science fiction convention in Peterborough. [1] [2]
[edit] See also
- 1945 (novel)
- Alternate history (fiction)
- Collaborator (novel)
- Fatherland (novel)
- Mother Night
- It Can't Happen Here
- In the Presence of Mine Enemies
- Making History (novel)
- SS-GB
- Swastika Night
- The Iron Dream
- The Man in the High Castle
- The Other Man
- The Plot Against America
- The Sound of His Horn
- The Ultimate Solution
- The Children's War
