WW2 – Women at War (and some Daleks)

London, 1940. Catrin Cole (Gemma Arterton), writer of a newspaper comic strip, finds herself unexpectedly summoned to the office of Roger Swain (Richard E. Grant), head of film at the Ministry of Information. Rather than the secretarial position she expected to be offered, she has been recruited to assist with writing the “slop”, i.e. providing an authentic female voice to write dialogue which will appeal to the female audience of British informational and propaganda films. As a woman, she is of course hired at a reduced rate, but any money is welcome is as her “husband” Ellis Cole (Jack Huston) is an unemployed artist who was disinherited due to his politics and whose depiction of bombed out buildings is considered too depressing to be commercial.

Catrin is soon called in to assist screenwriters Tom Buckley (Sam Claflin) and Raymond Parfitt (Paul Ritter) on a new feature length film about Lily and Rose Starling (Francesca and Lily Knight), who stole their father’s boat to help with the evacuation from Dunkirk. Upon interviewing the sisters, Catrin is disappointed to learn that their boat broke down before they made it to Dunkirk and the newspapers exaggerated their story, but she chooses not to reveal this information – partly for fear of losing her freshly negotiated pay rise, but also because the efforts of these two shy women acting in defiance of a drunk and abusive father are worthy of celebration. Buckley – who recommended Catrin to her Ministry position in the first place – is initially very much the entitled abusive prick with an incipient drinking problem of his own (the legacy of a similar upbringing to the Starling sisters), but mellows and begins to exhibit worthier character traits as he develops a greater respect for Catrin as both a writer and a human being.

At first Catrin needs to fight to keep the Starling sisters at the centre of their own story as nobody is willing to believe that an audience would accept two women in such a lead role. They reduce the sisters’ age from 30 to 21, give Rose a soldier boyfriend named Johnny, and change their father into a comedy drunken uncle who pilots the boat. The film is at risk of further distortion when the Secretary of War (Jeremy Irons) tells them to insert an American into the story to increase the potential international impact of their domestic propaganda film. But as the production continues to develop, Catrin’s constant willingness to champion the Starlings manifests in an increased influence over the narrative’s development, gradually increasing their participation in the story and eventually allowing her to give one of the sisters a pivotal role in saving the boat’s passengers.

Their Finest (2016) is very much a female-driven film, highlighting the gender disparities of the 1940s whilst emphasising the ways in which the war allowed women to move outside of the spheres to which they had previously been constrained. The most prominent example in the film is Phyl Moore (Rachael Stirling), the executive officer assigned as liaison between the screenwriting team and the Ministry of Information. Clearly coded as lesbian, the male screenwriters are inclined to see her as an interfering spy who must never be allowed access to their work, whereas Catrin can relate to her as an ally and is able to form a more productive relationship, both as a colleague and a friend. Nothing is ever really made of her sexuality (apart from a query about why a female love interest has to be male), but it doesn’t come across as tokenistic in any way and Stirling is wonderful in the part. Distinguished actor Ambrose Hilliard (Bill Nighy) is at first resistant to taking the role of the drunken uncle, unwilling to let go of his glory days as a romantic lead, but when his recently deceased agent’s sister Sophie Smith (Helen McCrory) takes over her brother’s work, she takes a much firmer hand in managing his expectations. Claudie Jessie and Stephanie Hyam shine with enthusiasm as the actresses playing the fictional versions of the Starling sisters, although there’s unfortunately little opportunity to see them out of character. Rebecca Saire’s mortuary nurse has a much smaller role but her character stands out as an exemplar of professionalism and compassion. Finally, Catrin’s efforts as a screenwriter are shown to have an empowering effect on the lives of the actual Starling sisters – her vision of how their life might have been inspires them to break away from their father and join the Auxiliary Territorial Service.

It comes as no surprise to find a fine lineup of female talent behind the camera as well. Danish director Lone Scherfig had previously worked with male lead Sam Claflin on The Riot Club (2014), an examination of toxic masculinity and male privilege, although she’s better known for making romantic comedies – a categorisation which could arguably be applied to Their Finest, although its more bittersweet elements make it an uncomfortable fit. Screenwriter Gaby Chiappe had almost 20 years of experience writing for television before making her feature film debut with this adaptation of Lissa Evans’ novel Their Finest Hour and a Half (2009), which deservedly earned her two award nominations from the British Independent Film Awards and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain. Her second film, Misbehaviour (2020), dealt with the 1970 Miss World competition, which has the double distinction of a high profile stage invasion by the women’s liberation movement and the first instance of a black woman winning the crown.

Prior to seeing Their Finest, I’d only seen Gemma Arterton in St Trinian’s (2007) and Quantum of Solace (2008) – both strong performances suggestive of a wider range, which it was a pleasure to see on display here. Rachael Stirling (daughter of Dame Diana Rigg) made an immediate impression as the lead of lesbian drama Tipping the Velvet (2002) and is on fine form here, dominating the screen whenever she appears. I’m used to seeing Helen McCrory in more villainous roles (Doctor Who: The Vampires of Venice, Penny Dreadful, Narcissa Malfoy in the Harry Potter films), so it’s a pleasant change to see her in a more sympathetic (but still fiercely independent) role. Stephanie Hyam went on to play the companion’s girlfriend in Peter Capaldi’s final year of Doctor Who (2017), while Claudia Jessie has been seen more recently in the breakthrough hit series Bridgerton (2020) as the most interesting member of the Bridgerton family.

The character of the film producer felt at least partly inspired by real life Hungarian-born producer Emeric Pressburger, who paired with director Michael Powell to produce a highly regarded body of work both during and after the war. Having thoroughly enjoyed the WW2-set supernatural romantic comedy A Matter of Life and Death (1946), I thought I’d watch another of their films to pair up with Their Finest – but, having watched the first hour of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), I decided that I really wasn’t in the mood. My subconscious must have been telling me something, though, because my next random viewing choice was also set in the era – the rather different Doctor Who: Victory of the Daleks (2010).

The Doctor (Matt Smith) and his new time-travelling companion Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) materialise in the Cabinet War Rooms in 1941, arriving one month after Prime Minister Winston Churchill (Ian McNeice) telephoned for assistance. In the Doctor’s absence, Churchill has approved the development of Professor Edwin Bracewell’s (Bill Paterson) “Ironsides” program, which in remarkably short order has managed to create a number of armed & armoured travelling machines suspiciously similar to Daleks in WW2 drag. This turns out to be an elaborate attempt to troll the Doctor, as the Daleks trundle around pretending to be servile until they provoke him sufficiently to say just the right words to trigger the creation of a new race of genetically pure Daleks. The Doctor is forced to decide between destroying the new Daleks or saving the Earth, and Amy demonstrates she has the emotional intelligence to convince a Dalek-created android to embrace its fake human memories rather than self-destruct.

The Daleks are an obvious thematic fit for World War 2, having originally been created by Terry Nation as thinly-veiled SF Nazi analogues, a connection made explicit in Doctor Who: Genesis of the Daleks (1975). In the context of the series, the purpose of this story is to return them to their original concern with genetic purity – most of the Daleks seen over the course of the previous few years had been genetically engineered compromises containing very little Dalek DNA, introducing an interesting strain of self-hatred to their characterisation but preventing them from being able to access their own technological heritage. In the context of the story itself, Churchill’s embrace of the Daleks represents the military argument that one must adopt the tools and techniques of the enemy in order to defeat them. The Doctor’s exposure of the Daleks’ agenda is a repudiation of this line of thinking, demonstrating that by embracing these poisonous ideals Churchill has opened his own people up to being destroyed and replaced by the ideology they were fighting. The propaganda aspect of the victory is emphasised by a post-victory scene in which a group of ordinary English soldiers restore the nation’s flag (felled during the fighting) to its position of prominence.

The contemporary female characters aren’t as prominent here as they were in Their Finest, but it is worth noting that only the female members of Churchill’s staff have any dialogue or significant screen presence – male officers are present but are consigned to the background. I do wish, though, that author Mark Gatiss had been able to resist the cliché of a female radio operator concerned for the safety of her missing pilot boyfriend, whose death is revealed in the wake of the larger victory to provide a bittersweet reminder that the war continues to take its toll. It’s not that it’s out of place in the story, more that it’s so crashingly unoriginal a trope that the viewer can easily predict every plot beat.

One puzzling element of the story is the author’s decision to date it circa October 1941. Gatiss did his fair share of research when putting the story together, visiting the real Cabinet War Rooms and reading various first-person accounts of the era. Maybe he didn’t put quite as much research into the dates, as the story appears to be set during the Blitz – a campaign which had ended by June 1941, several months before this story’s supposed setting. Although given that one of the primary pleasures of this story is the ludicrously unlikely spectacle of Spitfires in space facing off against a Dalek mothership, it’s probably not worth making too much of a fuss about.

On the whole, the story is an enjoyable bit of tosh which I’ll happily allow to whoosh past without any particular need for critical thought. My one regret is the poor public reaction to that lovely Licorice Allsorts collection of colourful new Daleks, the so-called “New Dalek Paradigm”, which were swiftly shuffled under the carpet and redesigned. I’ll admit that their midsections looked a bit clunky, but I loved the colours and had an immediate visual flash of a green Dalek which would match their aesthetic perfectly. We never saw Daleks this vibrantly coloured again, and that’s a real shame.

Two Thieves of Bagdad

The Thief of Bagdad (1924)

Following on the heels of high profile performances as Zorro, d’Artagnan and Robin Hood, Douglas Fairbanks mounted the swashbuckling fantasy adventure of The Thief of Bagdad, considered to be one of the best of Hollywood’s silent productions as well as Fairbanks’ personal favourite.

The opening and closing scenes provide a moral framework for the plot, as the Imam narrating the story commands the stars in the desert sky to spell out the lesson: “Happiness must be earned.” This might be intended as a caution to audiences not to identify too heavily with Ahmed, the titular thief, who is at his most engaging in the first hour of the film as he steals indiscriminately from whomever crosses his path. Fairbanks is clearly having a ball in this section, which allows him to bounce around the screen shirtless as he carries out all sorts of thefts and make his daring escapes, with a charming grin constantly plastered across his face. This is also when he’s at his most amoral – given the quantity of jewellery he is seemingly able to steal on a daily basis, there’s no reason that he should also have to steal food, beyond the challenge of the experience and the satisfaction of his own ego. When he happens across the Imam preaching charity in a mosque, Ahmed bursts out laughing to condemn this approach to life as foolish – his personal philosophy is to take what he wants as soon as he sees it, simply because he can.

His attitude begins to shift while he is in the process of robbing the palace, as he is distracted by happening across the bedchambers of the Princess (Julanne Johnston). Infatuated by her beauty but forced to flee when his presence is discovered, he masquerades as a Prince to compete for her hand in marriage. Only when he is successful does he begin to display evidence of a conscience – to his credit he confesses his deception and attempts to return the ring to the Princess, only for her to insist that he keep it. Having been recognised as the earlier intruder by one of the Princess’ handmaidens (Anna May Wong) and exposed to the Caliph, he repeats his confession and submits without complaint to flogging before being sent to his death (from which the Princess arranges a rescue).

Having used the first 90 minutes of the film to establish the romantic stakes, the final hour spirals off into a fantasy quest, as the various Princes competing for the Princess’ hand set out to find the most precious treasures of the land. Wonder is piled upon wonder as the filmmakers burn rapidly through a series of fantastical scenarios with fully realised sets, most notably an underwater palace constructed of glass which took three months to make but is onscreen for less than a minute. After encounters with fiery chasms, animated trees, a dragon, a giant spider and a giant bat, Ahmed rides a flying horse to the citadel of the moon to obtain a cloak of invisibility and a chest of magic powder which will save Bagdad from Mongol invaders. The effects in this final stretch of the film owe a huge debt to Fritz Lang’s Destiny [Der müde Tod] (1921) – Fairbanks was so impressed by this film that he bought the American rights and then kept it in storage so that he could copy many of the effects for The Thief of Bagdad without fear of being overshadowed, finally releasing Lang’s film four months after his own (which is at least a more ethical approach than Hollywood’s later practice of remaking a film then buying up prints of the original and destroying them).

Fairbanks is a thoroughly charming lead, although it must be observed that he’s used the old practice of darkening his skin for the role. Julanne Johnston is fine as the Princess but doesn’t particularly stand out in a role where she has little to do other than pine, look pretty and be rescued. Far more engaging is Anna May Wong, a Chinese American actress early in her career who immediately stands out among the Princess’ handmaidens, although her role in the plot is to betray the Princess to the Prince of the Mongols (played here by distinguished Japanese actor Kamiyama Sojin). Wong deserved a better career than she got – although she was well treated overseas, within American cinema she was often cast in stereotypical roles and even lost roles which should have been hers to white actresses. The most notable other actor of colour here is Noble Johnson (playing the Prince of the Indies), who set up the first African American film studio in 1916 and played a major part in creating opportunities for African Americans to branch out beyond the stereotypical roles more generally on offer.

The real star of this film, however, is the art direction and production design of William Cameron Menzies. The magnificent sets he created provide the epic level of scale and spectacle that is the main source of the film’s appeal, standing out even when intended primarily as a backdrop for Douglas Fairbanks’ stunts. While Fairbanks and his cast are an important component of the film’s success, it’s the look of the film which creates its enduring appeal.

The Thief of Bagdad (1940)

The technicolour partial remake of the original Thief has quite a complex production history, being formally attributed to three different directors but actually made by six. Produced by Alexander Korda for London Films, the film was begun by German director Ludwig Berger before Korda decided he didn’t like his work and secretly hired British director Michael Powell (The Red Shoes) to film additional material. After a while Korda managed to push Berger out and Powell formally took over, while American Tim Whelan was brought in to assist. With the outbreak of World War 2, Powell was reassigned to making morale-boosting propaganda films and the production was moved to America, to be completed by the uncredited William Cameron Menzies (who had worked on the original) plus producer Korda and his brother Zoltan.

This time around, Ahmad (John Justin) is no longer the titular thief but rather a naïve Prince who is usurped by his evil sorcerous vizier Jaffar (Conrad Veidt). The older mentor character credited as “The Thief’s Evil Associate” in the original film has been transformed into the teenage thief Abu (Selar Sabu). While Ahmad is given the role of the romantic lead who finds and loses the Princess (June Duprez) multiple times before they are finally reunited and restored to power, Abu’s thief is by far the more interesting character and the clear hero of the piece, without whom Ahmad would be utterly lost. Abu is responsible for breaking them both out of the Vizier’s dungeons and escaping to another city, where he intends to join the crew of famous adventurer Sinbad (mentioned but never seen). He postpones his own plans to help Ahmad visit the Princess (recognising that Ahmad’s role as romantic lead has softened his brain tissue and that he lacks the skills to enter the palace without being caught), but ends up turned into a dog by Jaffar after Ahmad is struck blind.

After the spell has been broken, Abu and Ahmad are shipwrecked whilst in pursuit of Jaffar. Abu wakes up alone and Ahmad disappears from the film entirely while Abu goes adventuring, tricking a Djinn (Rex Ingram) into granting him three wishes and defeating a number of death traps to obtain the All-Seeing Eye. Accidentally wasting his last wish to send Ahmad back to Bagdad (where he’s promptly caught and sentenced to death), Abu is left stranded in the desert until he smashes the Eye in frustration, unleashing the supernatural visitation of a lost King who makes Abu his heir and gives him a magic crossbow. The King basically tells him: “Hey Abu, you’re such a generous and helpful young man, you can have anything I own except for this magic carpet which would conveniently allow you to return to Bagdad and save your incompetent friend, I’ll just wander behind this curtain and leave you alone with it (wink, wink)” – and sure enough, Abu flies off to save the day and inadvertently fulfill a prophecy about the great saviour of Bagdad. Ahmad and the unnamed Princess get married, Ahmad announces that Abu will be sent to school to become his new vizier, and Abu promptly scarpers on his magic carpet before Ahmad can finish speaking because he would much rather be a heroic adventurer than stuck in a palace with these hopeless white people.

Conrad Veidt provides a well-judged performance as the evil villain Jaffar, leaning into his role but never going over the top. His performance in this role would go on to be the template for this character type, perhaps most famously seen in Disney’s animated Aladdin (1992). Indian actor Sabu is a charming lead, although he’s not given as many opportunities to show off his physical skills as Fairbanks. John Justin is adequate as Ahmad, while June Duprez is more effective in her role as the Princess than her predecessor. Not only is English character actor Miles Malleson as delightful as always in his role as the Princess’ father, he is also responsible for the final screenplay of the film, providing sparkling dialogue which thoroughly brings the film to life. Vincent Korda’s sets are rich in colour and built on a similar scale to the original, if in a slightly different style, and the giant spider (while a bit rough by today’s standards) is still quite effective and a potential trigger for arachnophobes. Although Abu and the Djinn are the only main characters to be portrayed by non-white actors, there is less evidence of artificially darkened skin here than in the original and almost all of the non-speaking extras are more authentically cast (admittedly not a high bar to surpass, but it is what it is).

This version of The Thief of Bagdad is a lively entertainment which still has a great deal to offer. It’s a worthy successor to the original and hugely influential in its own right. It was one of stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen’s favourite films and you can see its fingerprints all over his three Sinbad films (The 7^th Voyage of Sinbad, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger). Although I had vague childhood memories of seeing Sabu jumping around the buildings of Bagdad, the fact that I retained very little else led me to assume it wasn’t a very good movie. As a result it charmed me much more than I expected and I was delighted to be proven wrong.

Karel Čapek Double Feature – Krakatit / The White Disease

Like many people, while I’m aware of Karel Čapek as the author of the 1920 play R.U.R. which introduced the word “robot” to the world in its modern sense, I’ve never read or seen the play, let alone had any real awareness of the rest of his creative output. The most recent Virtual Cinémathèque hosted by ACMI, Karel Čapek on Film, features a curated selection of films based on two Čapek adaptations hosted by the Czech Film Classics [Česká filmová klasika] YouTube channel.

Krakatit (1948)

Karel Čapek’s second novel Krakatit (1924) was inspired by his horror at a 1917 munitions factory explosion, killing hundreds of workers (including children) and witnessed by Čapek from 25 miles away through a chateau window. His prescient novel deals with a man who invents a new explosive compound which is effectively a chemical equivalent to the nuclear bomb, named “krakatite” in reference to the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa. Čapek uses this invention to speculate about its impact on society and to explore a range of issues relating to the imperfect behaviour of humans on an individual and societal level. In the wake of World War 2, writer/director Otakar Vávra simplified the novel to focus more specifically on the impact of krakatite’s creation as an analogue for nuclear proliferation.

The narrative is formed from the fevered recollections/imaginations of Prokop (Karel Höger) as he receives emergency medical treatment for a combination of meningitis and pneumonia. He is initially seen stumbling through the street in full film noir Peter Lorre mode, barely keeping himself together physically or mentally, before collapsing in the arms of Tomes (Miroslav Homola), an old friend from his student days. He was working with a small quantity of his new discovery when it unexpectedly detonated in his face, triggered by the frequency of a late night pirate radio station broadcast. Tomes, who studied chemistry but is unemployed and desperate for money, pumps the delirious Prokop for information about his invention. Prokop wakes the next day to find himself alone and receives a visit from a mysterious veiled woman with a desperate message for Tomes. Still in a precarious state, he somehow makes his way to the house of Tomes’ father, who just happens to be a doctor.

After being nursed back to health by the doctor and his daughter (a nice girl with whom, of course, he falls in love), the chance discovery of a personals ad about krakatite in a discarded newspaper sheet drags him back into the plot – and further from reality. The view from the window of the doctor’s house is a film projection of Prokop climbing the hill to his own house, and suddenly we are inside the house with him as he encounters the person who placed the ad. After a night of drunken abandon, Prokop wakes up in another country, where he is forced to work on his invention. Although not very responsive to direct coercion, Prokop succumbs to the seductive overtures of Princess Wilhelmina Hagen (Florence Marly), who pulls out all of the femme fatale stops to wrap him around her finger. Their initial encounter, after she hides him from her men, is startlingly staged. Stating that she’s heard that he can judge a person’s character simply by holding their hand (a direct appeal to his sense of pride), she offers him her hand. The camera spends a great deal of time focused on their hands as they writhe together, becoming more frenzied, in a clear evocation of sexual congress, after which she pointedly observes that she is ready to explode in the arms of the right man. We next see her walking, seemingly oblivious to his warning cries, near the scene of the first test of his new explosive. When he tackles her to the ground to take cover, landing on top of her, she clutches him to her and bites his neck, leading him to begin kissing her shortly before a huge explosion leaves them both panting.

When Prokop eventually realises the extent to which he’s being manipulated, he escapes (in an increasingly unlikely sequence) with the aid of D’Hémon (Jirí Plachý), the ambassador, who reveals his true (rather unsubtle) name to be Daimon soon after we realise that is car is now travelling through the clouds. Daimon takes Prokop to meet an assembly of aristocrats and military leaders being charmed by an obvious analogue for Hitler, before whisking him away for a blatant “temptation of Christ in the desert” moment at the secret mountain base of the krakatite-triggering pirate radio station to offer him dominion over the Earth.

Far more didactic than the original novel, these elements of the movie are less irritating than they might be thanks to the way in which Vávra stages the material. The style of filming becomes more dream-like and openly expressionist, with perhaps the most effective sequence being the scene where Prokop confronts the Princess about her manipulation, only for her to freeze in place as her face fades away to a featureless mask. Frequent collaborator Jiří Srnka’s score is alternately bombastic, menacing, and gentle, with its experimental style foreshadowing the science fiction movies of the 1950s. Although the film ultimately turns out to be a moralising hallucination about the responsibility of the scientist to consider the repercussions of their inventions and their potential abuse by entrenched power structures, Vávra’s more imaginative sequences within this material create a more lasting impression.

Light Penetrates the Darkness [Svetlo proniká tmou] (1938)

Otakar Vávra worked in a range of styles throughout his career and would later become a mentor to prominent members of the Czech New Wave such as Miloš Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), Věra Chytilová (Daisies) and the recently deceased Jiří Menzel (Closely Watched Trains). He began his career as a director in a more avant-garde mode with this paean to electricity, frantically scored on piano by Joachin Bärenz, an abstract exploration of the relationship between light and dark which is at the core of black & white cinematography.

The White Disease [Bílá nemoc] (1937)

Just as Krakatit is haunted by the aftermath of World War 2, The White Disease is infected with the pestilential atmosphere heralding the war’s imminent outbreak. Karel Čapek’s play, starring Hugo Haas, debuted in Prague in 1937. Haas wrote and directed this movie adaptation, featuring most of the original cast, for release in December. Before the expiration of another year, Nazi Germany had annexed the Sudetenland, leading to the complete occupation of Czechoslovakia five months later.

The White Disease opens with a nationalistic rallying cry for military expansion into the territory of the unknown country’s “inferior” neighbours, presided over by The Marshal (Zdenek Stepánek) in full-on Hitler mode. We first meet Doctor Galén (Hugo Haas) – named in tribute to the ancient Greek physician Galen – in the middle of the crowd at this rally, appalled at the populace’s eager response to the Marshal’s warmongering.

While the nation prepares for war, it is also suffering from the increasing encroachment of the disease morbus chengi, a new form of leprosy which initially manifests as a white spot on the neck, is only infectious to those over 45 years old, and has no known cure. Professor Sigelius (Bedrich Karen), the self-important doctor in charge of the hospital, is complacently content to shunt the patients off into wards segregated according to social standing – the poor are treated with potash, while the wealthy are treated with Peruvian Balsam. Rather than being of any medical benefit, these “treatments” simply act to reduced the smell of their wounds – the final stage of treatment is the administration of morphine while the patients are left to die.

Dr Galén, a general practitioner who works with the less well off members of society, has a great deal of difficulty in convincing Prof Sigelius to allow him to implement a potential cure that has shown some promise among his patients. Sigelius is extremely resistant, insisting at first that he will only allow tried and true procedures in his hospital, and since the current course of treatment is (to his mind) proving effective (i.e. proceeding smoothly and hiding the problem without curing it), there is no reason to change. When he is convinced, after great persistence, to consider that the new treatment might actually work, he is only concerned with the prestige of discovery, refusing to implement the cure unless he is given the complete solution and allowed to test it himself. Only after the possibility is raised that he himself might one day be infected will he allow Dr Galén to conduct a clinical trial to confirm the cure’s success on the hospital’s “charity cases”.

Although Sigelius tries to crowd Galén out of the picture after the cure is proven to be effective, Galén (an ex-military doctor who was horrified by the waste of life he saw in the trenches of World War 1) announces to the press that he is the only one who knows the cure’s secret, and that until the wealthy and powerful exert their influence to end war and commit to peace, he will only administer the cure to the poor. Rather than negotiate with Galén, Sigelius kicks him out of the hospital, and Galén makes good on his promise.

Much of the rest of the film involves the attempts of those in positions of privilege to convince Galén to treat them. People with varying levels of societal influence are encouraged to do what they can to encourage peace, such as quitting their job in the munitions factory or using their monetary/political influence to campaign for peace in the press. None of them, however, are willing to give up what they have in the cause of peace, even though it will mean their death.

No sooner has Sigelius received approval to set up concentration camps for the infected than the disease begins to become apparent in those further up the national hierarchy. The climactic confrontation between Galén and the Marshal exposes the arrogant self-absorption of the man at the top, who portrays himself as merely being a conduit for the will of the people despite having consciously worked to rile up his countrymen’s aggression, orchestrating faked diplomatic incidents over a period of months and planning for a sneak bombing raid on the enemy prior to the declaration of war, all for the sake of the military glory which he believes his country should want. His ego-driven feelings of divine authority even lead him to deliberately expose himself to the disease by shaking the hand of his infected friend, believing himself too strong to succumb to something which surely only affects the weak (with predictable consequences). The disease finally manifests once he has irrevocably committed the country to a war which will not be the easy victory he expected, and he discovers that he has made himself so indispensable to the military hierarchy that the entire war effort would collapse on his death. After imagining himself leading the war effort on horseback from the front as the flesh decays from his skeletal figure, the Grim Reaper incarnate, he finally succumbs to Galén’s condition of peace and summons him to the ministry… only for Galén to be killed by the crowds outside the ministry before he can enter, due to his refusal to join in with their cries for war.

Haas’ technique as a director technique isn’t visibly on display for much of the film, probably because of its origins as a stage play. One sequence that stood out to me came during the conversation between Galén and the Marshal, when the Marshal attempts to appeal to Galén’s military experience as a way of evoking a sense of duty. The camera focuses on the Marshal’s gleaming military boots, pacing backwards and forwards, before contrasting them with Galén’s ordinary footwear, firmly in place. We then cut to a shot of the Marshal’s torso, chest puffed up, decorated with medals and military braid, contrasted with Galén’s shabby civilian suit. Finally we see a shot of the Marshal’s face as he attempts to pull rank, switching to Galén’s face as he raises his chin high and refuses to comply, demanding to be arrested for insubordination.

Although the movie aims for a message of hope despite the cynical inevitability of Galén’s death, the very forces that Čapek and Haas railed against were soon to overtake their country. Čapek, named by the Nazis as “public enemy number two”, died in 1938 of pneumonia, not long before they seized power. Haas lost his position with the National Theater due to his Jewish background and fled to America with his immediate family, but was to lose both his father and brother to the concentration camps.

Strange Fascination (1952)

After moving to America, Haas found it difficult to reestablish his film career. He broke back into acting in 1944 and finally obtained work as a writer/director again in 1951 with a string of B-movie films noirs, generally involving an older man (played by Haas) who is exploited by an attractive younger woman. In Strange Fascination, selected as a support feature by ACMI, Haas plays an emigre pianist struggling to establish a career in America, enticed into a relationship with a dancer (Cleo Moore) before she dumps him for a younger man. It’s more sentimental than most films of its type, building the pianist’s life back up again at the end with his original wealthy patron. It’s perfectly competently made on a tight budget, but I found little to recommend it, despite the esteem in which it’s held by Martin Scorsese.