It Happened Here

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.

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.

Like Peter Watkin's "The War Game" which came out around the same time and which imagined life, or what was left of it, in Britain after a nuclear attack, Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo's "It Happened Here" imagines a Britain under the jackboot as if Hitler had succeeded in invading after the retreat at Dunkirk and like "The War Game" is filmed as if it were a documentary. If it has a fault it's that the acting, by a largely non-professional cast, feels distinctly am-dram. Otherwise this is a chilling portrait of a country under occupation, superbly shot by the great Peter Suschitzky and Brownlow. Interestingly, it shows that the British resistance could be just as brutal as the Germans are usually shown in this kind of film, making this the perfect companion piece to Cavalcanti's masterpiece "Went the Day Well".

Ignore Leonard Maltin's comments - he's clearly missed the point of the film. The "Brits" don't keep a stiff upper lip, and the cooperation between them and the Nazis is shocking. The documentary footage of Nazi soldiers parading around London etc appears ever so real. The awesome photography makes up for the weak plot and main character. A must-see.

The Battle of Algiers is another such film which mixes documentary with drama.

Someone decides to make their own feature film ? Don't tell me , I know what's coming next - a zombie apocalypse filmed on someones mobile phone ? Well that's what happens in the 21st Century but away back in the mid 1950s two ambitious amateur film makers Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo pulled out all the stops to make an alternative neo-realist film featuring a scenario where Operation Sealion was a success and Britain is under the fascist jackboot and these two idealists managed to pull out all the stops . All I really know about the behind the scenes story is that it took them eight years and seven thousand pounds sterling of their own finance to produce it

From a technical point of view IT HAPPENED HERE is somewhat crude . Filmed in black and white it resists the temptation to intercut real life footage of the second world war and instead everything on screen is pre-filmed for the camera . I'd be very interested in hearing amusing anecdotes about the production . Did the makers get strange reactions by asking where they could get some Waffen SS uniforms for example ? It is amazing that the production team gained access to so much military hardware and equipment . If there's a downside it's that the directors can't help showing off Nazi marching bands walking along the streets of London . Another negative is that the sound-mix is very poor

It's the screenplay that makes up for any limitations in the mis-en-scene . One annoyance is that "England" is constantly mentioned throughout . I take it the Nazis stopped at the borders of Wales and Scotland or more likely the writers have euphemistically used the term England when they mean Britain/UK . As a Celt this upset me slightly then I quickly forgave them because the story quickly nails human nature under occupation . There's not really a central plot but this doesn't matter in the slightest because human nature is put under the spotlight and without pluralist democracy human nature knows no bounds when it comes to inhumanity

By this I mean very few people would set you on fire , but by the same yardstick very few people would lift a finger to help you if you were on fire . Truth be told few people would p*ss on you if you were on fire . You ever worked for a corporate company ? I have worked for several and universally they operate in the same way a one party state does . Most people are indifferent to the company , they see it as a means to an end as in getting paid to feed their families and never lose their decency as humans or as colleagues . This isn't enough for some people . They are in a minority but give such people an inch of power and they shall take light years . Be thankful that democracy doesn't allow such people to rise to the top .

If there's one problem with the film's politics it's equating the resistance not being all that different from the methods employed by the fascists and the film is book ended in that both sides have the justification of "If you're not for us you're against us". I can understand what the makers are trying to do but is it actually true that "The appalling thing about fascism is that you've got to use fascist methods to get rid of it." Presently in Syria the Kurdish YPG and their Arab comrades in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are engaged in a war against Daesh and the fascist Assad government who are backed by proxies from Russia , Iran and Turkey and yet never stoop to the methods of the regime they are fighting . That said in my own experience of politics there's a noticeable similarity between the far left and far right in that the world is constantly manipulated by a race of outsiders . Fascists use the word "Jewry" while leftists use the word "Zionists" and only the phraseology is different

If nothing else IT HAPPENED HERE gives an interesting window on the world of what things would be like if the Nazis had won the Battle Of Britain . Perhaps the most scary thing is that it's a world not a million miles removed from our own corporate Western world where "We don't accept your decisions. You accept ours." . Don't be glad you live in a democracy . Be sad it's never going to be democratic enough