The Iron Curtain, Film Propaganda and American Politics
The 1940s marked the purge of Anti-communists films within the American Film industry. The cold war affected the America in nearly all its facets whether cultural or political. Subsequent to President Winston Churchill announcing the fall of the iron curtain that divided the Soviet Union from its satellite European non-communist states, enmity and suspicion intensified between America and the Soviet Union (Landon, Films of the Cold War: 1948-1990). At the center of heightened political and ideological tension between the two countries was the film industry in America. Powerful, influential figures, both political and public noted that the film in America had a way with influencing the masses. The American film industry was a convenient platform for the Soviet Union's communist party to spread and ingrain its ideologies to the American mass population indirectly through films. At this realization Hollywood became the target of intensive scrutiny to remove any bad fruit, that is directors, actors and script writers, spreading the gospel of communism in their films, and would in the eventuality infect the masses with their blemish of liaising with the "Reds" (Landon, Films of the Cold War: 1948-1990).
To prove their utmost loyalty to the American political system and the free world, it was a requisite that studio houses and movie producers name and identify employees under their watch involved in suspicious activities or out rightly cooperating with Russian communists(Walsh, David.
[...] Through actor Dana Andrew as the famous Russian spy Igor Gounzeko, the Iron Curtain succeeds in portraying communism as an oppressive and torturous regimes that other than creating peaceful coexistence, disrupts normal lives, and instills fear within individuals and destroys lives. Bibliography James Combs, Sara T. Combs. Film Propaganda and American Politics directing: An Analysis and Filmography. NewYork: Routledge Landon, Philip J. Jackin of the Cold War: 1948 to February Shaw, Tony. British Cinema and the Cold War analysis: The State, Propaganda and Consensus. New York: I.B Tauris The Iron Curtain. [...]
[...] Among the many of Hollywood films produced to spread political propaganda and highlight the wrong doing of communists during this era is the Iron Curtain” (1948). This study gives a close review of the film Iron Curtain” and its role as a propaganda film in highlighting the dangers of communism to the American mass audience in the late 1940s. Shot in a low key, semi- documentary style, The Iron Curtain film, directed by William W. and starring Dana Andrews and Genev Tiernery, revolves around Igor Gouzenko, a Russian spy with a remarkable proficiency of deciphering codes. [...]
[...] The 1940s marked the purge of Anti-communists films within the American Film industry. The cold war affected the America in nearly all its facets whether cultural or political. Subsequent to President Winston Churchill announcing the fall of the iron curtain that divided the Soviet Union from its satellite European non-communist states, enmity and suspicion intensified between America and the Soviet Union (Landon, Films of the Cold War: 1948-1990). At the center of heightened political and ideological tension between the two countries was the film industry in America. [...]
[...] The Iron Curtain shows Igor as fearful of raising his yet to be born child in his country of origin Russia. This fear serves as Igor's driving force to disintegrate himself completely from the ruthless communist regime. His defection from service to his country of birth portrays the soviet union as a hellish place, tolerant to worldly vices (Shaw 108). In communicating anti-communists undertones to the American mass audience, films from the 1940s often depicted communists as intellectuals or gangsters with the former exuding foreign accents and cold-blooded accents while the latter as cynical and ruthless and ready to kill anyone even fellow country's men for the sake of party loyalty (James & Sara 98). [...]
[...] Dr. William.A. Wellman. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation Film. [...]
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