Will It Happen Again?

Will It Happen Again? (1948)

** (out of 4)

While people were off fighting in World World II there were many back home producing documentaries on the subject so that people here could see what was going on. These documentaries were usually propaganda pieces and this one here is certainly that.

Directed by Dwain Esper (MANIAC) this film appears to take a bunch of newsreel footage and possibly other documentary footage and edit them together. I'm not going to say this is the most entertaining WWII doc that I've seen but there's enough interesting footage to make it worth watching to history buffs.

There's a lot of footage of Hitler "enjoying his freedom" as we see him playing around with his kids as well as girlfriend Eva Braun. There's a lot of footage of various German soldiers enjoying their time at a lake. There's also some footage that deals with Mussolini. There is also some graphic stuff dealing with the deaths that they caused.

As I said, this here is edited together from several different sources and it got released under a number of titles including THE STRANGE LOVE LIFE OF ADOLF Hitler, HITLER'S LOVE LIFE and CONFIRM OR DIE. The film has enough interesting stuff if you've seen all the other WWII documentaries but if you're new to the genre then it's best to start elsewhere first.

Dated look at the rise of Hitler and Fascism is a trip into the past. The film concerns itself primarily with the rise and fall of Hitler but at the same time takes side trips into the Italy for a look at Mussolini (which is positive at first), and into Russia where it lambastes both the Czars and the Communists.It seems to consist of footage that was mostly shot by the Germans, Italians or Soviets and includes scenes from the death camps and of the broken and abused bodies of Mussolini and his mistress.

Presented by the Navy Club of The United States and directed by Dwain Esper (of Reefer Madness and Maniac fame),this seems to have been put together by taking various existing documentaries and cutting them together. I'm guessing at this but it would seem likely since the narrator changes from sequence to sequence as does the tone of the narration going from informative to snide to positive (the early Mussolini footage seems to have come from a positive look at the Italian dictator.) The effect is a bit jarring at times, but it some how is keeping with what would be a less than objective view of the war some three years after the fact.

If you're interested in the war this film is worth seeing. Not only will you get a snapshot of the war close to its end you'll also get a look at some footage you probably haven't seen before. Objective and totally informative it is not, there is a great deal of history not covered and its more interested in getting across the idea that dictators are bad then filling you in on every fact. Its an attempt to put events into context since the war had just ended and those seeing the film knew what had happened and didn't need to be told again.

Its not perfect but it is worth seeing. If you can take its cut together nature and understand that its as much a document of the time as the time it documents then you'll have a good time with it, and you'll probably learn a thing or two from it.

7 out of 10.

FYI- The print that I saw, which came from Sinister Cinema (under the title The Love Life of Adolph Hitler) runs just shy of 90 minutes so I'm not sure why the IMDb running time is listed as 60.