So if the title didn't make it clear this film has a wee bit of the old propaganda in it. Now at first you might not think much of it. Just another detective story that happens to be going after communist instead of mobsters.
They show the Communists to act just like Monsters. Sitting around in a random hotel rooms with an ornament amount of food. Talking about how great it'll be when they conquer everything and now they'll have one over on the simple people.
Really simple character development. These guys are flat-out criminals from the start. There's no sympathy given, no humanisation. Their leader is this strange Joseph Goebbels sounding man who I can only surmise is from East Germany.
Then to make things even worse there's this horrible race angle to all of it. Communist Party is recruiting every African-American they can find. And plenty of them are listening. Which may have been semi true back in the day as well. You tell a second-class group of citizens that they could actually be equals in a country that wasn't run with overly racist policies and you might take an interest to.
Of course in the film the communist or just using all the black people as a political tool. II of the fiend Revolution happens they'll throw these people to the dogs and treat them just as badly as the rest of the American public.
The whole thing gets worse later on. They start referring to some of the older race riot that happened in the 40s. Like the one in Harlem New York, Detroit or even the racist riots that started in Los Angeles during the war. All of this got blamed on the Communists in this movie. And that's not to say that actual communist didn't have a little hand in it. The truth of the matter is everyone's kind of screwed over from the start. You got a bunch of people in Moscow looking over the racial segregation problems in America. And they decide to artificially inflated even more so which becomes even more problematic when you consider that they didn't have to push anything to get those riots to happen. There's a lot of inherited problems in America when it comes to racial issues involving just about every group of people you can imagine. The Communist just throwing gasoline on to an already blazing fire just made everything that much worse. And then killed any case anybody had to actually fix the problems to begin with. As they could just point their fingers at Moscow and say; ''Well hey wasn't it these guys who started all these problems?''
Later on the communist use more of these tricks. Instigating a fake Riot crowd pretending to be a Jewish national movement and then claiming that the Communists had no love for the Jewish people or anyone else. They even organised a group of German migrants to follow in a fascistic league buy a fake fascist organised by the communist.
Once again all of this stuff is semi true. The Soviets did send over spy agencies to establish these communities within the United States and to try and break up the American Spirit. But it was done in such a small and insignificant scale that you just can't compare it to how this movie works.
The sad truth of the matter is. You had a big institution in the Soviet Union trying to get a foothold in the United States usually so they could steal technology or blueprints or just to keep a tab on what America is doing.
Then you have the CIA and the FBI who are trying to counter it. But sometimes you find out that certain organisation were working with the other organisation and that they're all internally corrupted. The CIA is practically built on corruption and the FBI ruled by Hoover was almost dictatorial and how it ran its institution.
And they were all willing to screw each other over if it meant that they could grasp a little bit more power. And that's the say nothing of the mafia who gets intermixed with all of these people at some point.
It creates this horrible atmosphere in where all the good people trying to make the world a better place are practically smashed down by these overbearing organisations. There were Communists, socialists, capitalists, unionist and a few other groups who really did just want to make the world a better place. They wanted to bring in job security and have unions to ensure proper sanitary work conditions. They wanted to eliminate poverty and bring in some form of equality maybe they just wanted to bring up the standard of living to the average American person or to give them a better educational system so that people could grow into a more productive member of society.
It all just creates this weird image of artificiality. As if all the actions everyone's taking to try and defend their way of life is kind of pointless because they're ultimately sacrificing Parts their life just to keep the defence up.
Okay so after all that rambling we're left with one real question. ''Is the movie itself any good''. And luckily the answer is yes.
It's a fairly solid film in where a man is an undercover agent for the FBI working in this Communist party. It's very similar to your Cops vs Mobsters kind of film in where a guy has to keep his head in a dire situation.
The only difference is the entire thing breaks down to propaganda every 20 minutes. And the Very ending is so corny and so ridiculous that you can't help but laughs. As you get this closing image on a statue of Abraham Lincoln. The part I found so amusing is that if this was a Soviet movie, The only thing they have to do is change switch communist with capitalist, switch FBI to KGB and take out the Lincoln's and replace them with Lenin. You'd end up with the exact same freaking movie.
I don't support what this movie was. A dangerous little tool that would have let the xenophobia and mistrust. This wasn't helping anybody situation at the time.
and I'd love to say that this movie could be watch now with little to no effort because it can't possibly do any damage in the modern day. But I saw this movie on a YouTube channel and the comments underneath or just a bunch of idiots claiming this is what America needs. ''These are the messages we need to pay more attention to''. ''We have to fight the corruption'' blah blah blah.
That part really concerns me. This film is blatant propaganda by the standard of the day.
It's laughable propaganda by today's standards. And to see people taking the message seriously or considering it worthwhile information is kind of concerning. It's my sincere hope that it's nothing but a group of major trolls and that I'm being taken for a ride on this whole thing.
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