Film Propaganda

Making use of, in particular, the flood of recent material which has emerged from the former USSR, this is a revised and enlarged edition of a text on propaganda and film in Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. The author examines how each government used the cinema’s potential for mass political propaganda, and analyzes and discusses films which exemplify important aspects of propaganda in process, and which are available for viewing. New in this edition are examinations of two classic Stalinist films: Grigori Alexandrov’s musical comedy, “The Circus” (1936), which celebrated in spectacular Hollywood fashion the supposed superiority of the Soviet way of life and new constitution; and “The Fall of Berlin” (1949), which by contrast is a vast-scale and overtly propagandist paean to Stalin’s pivotal role in World War II, and represents the apotheosis of the cult of personality. Taylor has also updated his coverage of Nazi Germany, with fresh illustrative material and a revised bibliography.

Author Biography

Richard Taylor is Emeritus Professor of Politics, Swansea University, Wales. His publications include The Eisenstein Reader, The Film Factory:Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents,1896-1939,Inside the Film Factory and The Battleship Potemkin: The Film Companion (I.B.Tauris,2000). He is editor of the Sergei Eisenstein Selected Works series (British Film Institute)and of KINO: The Russian Cinema Series , published by I.B.Tauris.