Yesterday I had the privilege of a bizarre double-feature. In my US History Class, we watched the infamous Red-baiting short film Red Nightmare (1962), which plays as The Twilight Zone Imagined By Joe McCarthy. That evening, TCM showed a bizarrely appropriate film: Michael Curtiz's infamous propaganda whitewash of Stalin's regime, Mission to Moscow (1943). Both movies were produced by Jack L. Warner and Warner Bros., each with the strong backing of the US government, producing politically expedient propaganda towing the party line about our Bolshevik buddies. The two films couldn't be further apart in their depiction of Communism and the Soviet regime, yet made for a fascinating example of Hollywood politics at work.
Mission to Moscow (1943, Michael Curtiz)
Based on the fawning memoirs of former American Ambassador (and useful idiot) Joseph E. Davies, Mission to Moscow is a war-time propaganda flick intended to support an ally. Unfortunately, the ally in question is Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union, the bloodthirsty, tyrannical Bolshevik responsible for twice as many murders as Hitler, and the movie can endorse him only through dishonesty and double-talk. Directed by Michael Curtiz (Casablanca, Mildred Pierce) and starring pretty much every actor who ever wandered through the Warner lot, it's a huge film in scope and scale, and is perversely watchable. In some ways, Mission to Moscow is fairly benign, if naive - its desire to paint the USSR as a friend is understandable given when it was made - but in other ways it goes too far, providing historical distortion that any denizen of the 21st Century will find repulsive.
The first half of the film isn't too hard to swallow. Besides establishing Ambassador Davies (Walter Huston) as a normal guy with a loving wife and beautiful daughter (Eleanor Parker), the early scenes are somewhat innocuous. Germans are depicted as a rigid militarists, with Hitler Youth marching through a train station, Mein Kampf being sold on book stands, liberally-borrowed stock footage of Nazi rallies, and duplictious officials. Then we move to Russia, where all the people are cheerful and friendly, dancing and singing and partying, enjoying their work in steel mills (full of American-made machinery, the film emphasizes) and luxuriating in perfume and dress stores, the leaders concerned, honest and benign, and the Army strong and patriotic. Communism is mentioned only obliquely, and aside from warnings by quibblesome European diplomats (what do they know anyway?), no mention of Stalin's tyranny or oppression. It's kind of boring, but nothing overtly offensive.
A little over an hour in, however, the film becomes an unbearable apologia for Stalinism, not only glossing over but endorsing Communist terror. The most egregious bit is the lengthy depiction of the show trials of Bukharin (Konstantine Shayne) and other Soviet officials accused of conspiring with Trotsky and Nazi Germany to overthrow. According to this film, the trials were fair, just and honest, the confessons completely honest - because why would these men make such confessions if they weren't true? The Hitler-Stalin pact is glossed over; Hitler's invasion of Poland is mentioned without noting Stalin's complicity, and the Soviet invasion of Finland is inexcusably dismissed as being a pre-emptive strike against the Nazis (even though Hitler gave Stalin the go-ahead for this invasion). At what point does propaganda, even in a good cause, go too far?
The film continues in this vein. The last half-hour is obnoxious speechifying; any dramatic value is lost as Davies and the rest of the cast stake out positions in favor of Comrade Stalin. Besides the understandable demonization of Germany and Japan, the movie casts a critical eye towards the "reactionaries" in Britain and France who allowed this to happen, accepting Soviet propaganda as unvarnished truth. To cap it off, Stalin himself appears towards the end, depicted as a friendly, pipe-smoking man deeply concerned about his people, loving America and wanting nothing more than world peace. The calm, restrained performance of Manart Kippen sells this more than anything; it would be easy to play Stalin's rantings about reactionaries and fascists in an evil, paranoid light. But between Kippen's performance and Davies' whole-hearted acceptance, it's like Stalin is speaking God's own truth!
The film can't even keep its propaganda straight: during a question-and-answer session at the end, Davies says that the Red Army is the strongest fighting force on Earth, and then turns around a minute later and excuses the Hitler-Stalin pact by saying Stalin wasn't ready to fight. We see rigid masses of Nazi stormtroopers on the march and see them as evil, but later we see an even larger parade of the Red Army and hear it declared as heroic and patriotic. We hear speeches about the evils of totalitarianism with Stalin praised in the same breath. By the end of the film, we're expected to digest this double-talk and see Comrade Stalin and his Socialist Utopia as our earnest partner in freedom, defending the liberty of freedom-loving peoples the world over.
What a load of shit.
It's wrong to say that Americans didn't know what was going on in Soviet Russia. Atrocity stories came out of Russia almost as soon as Stalin took power, and by 1943, Stalin's purges, the Ukranian famine, and general tyranny were well-known - part of the reason, indeed, why the West refused to side with the Soviets until it was too late. To be fair, Americans hated Communism for many reasons, some more valid than others, but at least one of them was that Stalin was unquestionably a monstrous tyrant. If Hitler had been portrayed in a Hollywood film as a jovial, concerned man with a deep love for his people and world peace, there'd have been hell to pay. It's one thing to argue that Stalin was a useful ally, that he was the first to denounce Hitler, and the lesser of two evils; quite another to say he's a nice guy. Even as war-time propaganda, it's very hard to accept the film's adulation of Stalin, and it's best viewed as a perverse curio piece.
The movie is certainly well-made: Curtiz ably marshalls an extensive production, using hundreds of extras, a huge variety of sets and locations, and through editor Owen Marks, impressive use of montage and double-exposure. The cast is a veritable Who's-Who of Hollywood character actors. Walter Huston (The Furies) gives a solid performance, delivering Davies and screenwriter Howard Koch's adulation of Stalin with conviction. The supporting cast is so huge few really make an impression, but one can spot Gene Lockhart (Hangmen Also Die!), Vladimir Sokoloff (For Whom the Bell Tolls), Moroni Wilson and Manart Kippen (Mildred Pierce), Wallis Clark (Gone With the Wind), Virginia Christie (High Noon) and Cyd Charisse. And those are just the ones I'm familiar with.
I think I've said more than enough about Mission to Moscow. Let's move on to our next feature, shall we?
Red Nightmare (1962, George Waggner)
Produced by the Defense Department "under the personal supervision of Jack L. Warner", Red Nightmare is a short instructional video about the evils of Communism. Narrated by Jack Webb of Dragnet fame, directed by George Waggner (The Wolf Man) and starring a host of up-and-coming TV actors, it's a deadpan reconstruction of right-wing paranoia and fears during the McCarthy era. The film at least has camp value, which can't be said of our previous flick.
The movie plays out curiously like a Twilight Zone episode. Jerry Donovan (Jack Kelly) is an American dad who takes his freedoms for granted, skipping out on PTA meetings and quarreling with love-struck daughter Linda (Pat Woodell). Jack Webb decides that this American needs a wake-up call, and gives him a "real Red nightmare"! Jerry wakes up in a Communist-run town, where everyone calls each other Comrade, his daughter goes to work, his wife (Jeanne Cooper) is a sexless Commissar, his children threaten to inform on him, Churches are turned into Communist propaganda museums, and - well, you get the idea. In the end, Jerry goes too far, and is arrested and sentenced to death for his unwitting subversion. He wakes up, his belief in Americanism and family ("Democracy makes you frisky!" says our professor) reaffirmed.
Red Nightmare is a goofy, straightforward presentation of Commie-paranoia, given as the unvarnished truth. It represents all of Joseph McCarthy's fears about Bolshevism: the subversion of loving sitcom America into an emotionless, sterile, atheistic wasteland, where your wife's face is perpetually locked in a raised-brow sneer. Apparently, the Soviet Union hasn't changed since the Revolution, with barricades and soliders patrolling every street corner. As such, it's ridiculously outdated, exaggerated and silly, yet has a certain kitschy charm, if only through its earnestness. The film's depiction of Communist show-trials is the most authentic point, and it's hard to laugh at Jerry's anti-Communist speech at the end. Perhaps it's my dislike of Bolshevism, but I find the movie's propaganda more silly than offensive. Then again, it might also help that the film is only about half-an-hour long, instead of the unbearable two hours of Curtiz's epic.
Waggner's direction is fine, if not particularly distinguished; the film moves at a brisk clip, and aside from Webb's purple prose monologues ("There is only one man standing between - and that's you!") and a cheesy climactic montage of what it means to be American, it's mercifully economical. The movie has a cast of talented actors who would go on to television fame, from Jack Kelly (Maverick) and Jeanne Cooper (The Young and the Restless) to Peter Brown (Lawman) and Robert Conrad (Wild, Wild West).
Red Nightmare is a silly bit of '60s kitsch, but if nothing else it's an interesting counterpoint to Mission to Moscow, showing how Jack L. Warner was happy to distort the Soviet Union one way or the other, depending on the political situation.
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