It Happened Here

This film has one of the oddest production histories that I've ever heard about. Kevin Brownlow was appearantly only 18 years old when he came up with this idea and asked his then 16 year old friend Andrew Mollo if he could help out. It took them 8 years and with help from Stanley Kubrick,Tony Richardson, etc they managed to get film made.

With that said it is astonishing film albeit flawed like so many other debut films but in this case the benefits outweighs the flaws. This is simple story about a nurse (in what has become nazi occupied UK)who must join the nazi party in order to feed herself. Even though her political views are different she has no choice, and joins but soon ends up in more trouble then before.

The biggest problem with this film for me is the very bad audio, sometimes the young directors don't seem to know what kind of story they want to tell. Also some of the acting is flawed but becomes even more creepy when you know that some of the actors were real English neo Nazis.

But this must be one of the best alternative history films I have ever seen so far. The film gives off a really good authentic feeling, something many films today lacks.

And the ending serves as reminder of fascism, war crimes, evil that men do, regardless of political views.

Being a Londoner, and born but a few months after England declared war on

Germany, this film has always held a special significance for me. I originally saw it when it opened in London: a mere twelve years after the worst war in living memory, had ended. I saw it for the second time recently at a friend's house. To me, it is still the best film about the occupation of a country by a foreign army. In his book, "How It Happened Here", co-director, Kevin Brownlow explains how he got the idea to

make this film. He just happened to be walking down a London street, at the

moment when a car screeched to a halt outside a shop. Four or so heavyset

men piled out of the car. They were dressed, recalls Brownlow, in grey

overcoats in a style reminiscent of Russian KGB agents. All were bulky and

acted in a furtive manner. It got Brownlow thinking: "what if....."

On a budget that can only be described as miniscule, it took Brownlow and his co-director, Andrew Mollo, eight years to complete the film. It's shot in a

quasi-documentary style, which makes it even more realistic. Their attention to detail is amazing considering the paucity of funds available - every uniform the actors wore was sewn by Mrs. Mollo. While I can't claim to personally 'remember' those years when London was

bombed constantly, I can recall the sound, or should I say lack of it (we were all inside a bomb shelter), when a German V-2 rocket (nicknamed a doodle-bug),

ran out of fuel and plummeted to the ground. We were lucky: it landed but a few streets away, killing many, many people, breaking windows, shaking chimneys and covering all our possesions in a thick layer of soot!

"It Happened Here" is remarkable.

Somewhere along the line back around 1970 this was on TV in the UK and I watched it as a 12-year-old. I remember being stunned by it then. I have just watched it again after a gap of 52 years. It's still remarkable.

When this was made in 1964, the war was a "recent" memory. Plenty of people alive then had direct actual experience of war as adults. The "British" cultural memory was being formed in those years, and it reverberates today. I grew up in that environment.

I'm not sure that a film like "It Happened Here" could be made in Britain today. We have forgotten the actual experience of war and the impact it had here in reality. Very few people now have direct experience. Instead, we have stereotypes and myths. We have literally thousands of people engaged in "re-enactment" days or weekends. They dress up in facsimile German uniforms and flounce around as if it's clever. It's not clever.

The Nazi cult was vile and repressive. This was understood in a different way in 1964 to how it is understood today. Back then, Nazism was understood as insidious - it worked from the inside exercising it's power through propaganda, denounciations and control. "It Happened Here" shows us this world - the world we would have had.

The film itself is limited. Obviously made by amateurs on a limited budget in a different world. But it's ambitious in scope and daring. It was deliberately provocative - designed to challenge the world of 1964 and point out how dangerous right-wing thinking is.

Still a very remarkable piece.

What's most amazing about this film is that it was made by teenagers and looks good even for being shot in 16mm. Seeing Nazis goose-stepping in front of various UK landmarks and is pretty upsetting and totally convincing. The narrative loses a lot of steam after an hour (I think this film was expanded from a short) but the faked newsreel shown in a cinema halfway through the movie is totally flawless in its imitation of German propaganda films.

Must have been 1967 when I was based at High Wycombe and often went to London for the day. The film was released during this year and wandered into the cinema. The title and posters intrigued me and I was just killing time.

I was amazed at how realistic this film portrayal was and how quiet the cinema was, not a sound from start to finish. The way ID cards/papers were used, the attitude of some people that collaborated, and the resistance starting to fight back, it was just brilliant.

I'd love to see it again,let's hope it is screened on TV but I don't remember seeing it on TV to date, unless it was during the 80's when I was working abroad.