Die Brücke (The Bridge): Hitler’s Youth Pay the Ultimate Price
Bernhard Wicki’s Die Brücke arrives only fourteen years after the events it depicts — the equivalent, as James notes in the episode, of making a film today about something that happened in 2012. That proximity matters. Released in 1959 and nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Film, The Bridge was among the first […]
JoJo Rabbit: You know, Fascism for Kids
Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit arrives with the full weight of its reputation — an Oscar-winning dark comedy about a ten-year-old boy in Nazi Germany whose imaginary friend is a buffoonish Hitler, and whose world is upended when he discovers a Jewish girl hidden in his mother’s attic. The film is vibrant, well-acted, and visually inventive. […]
‘Network’: When Corporations Take Over the Airwaves
Sidney Lumet’s Network might seem like an unusual entry for a show about fascism on film — there are no uniforms, no rallies, no occupation. But James and Teal argue that Paddy Chayefsky’s 1976 dark comedy is one of the most penetrating films ever made about the conditions in which fascism grows. The question the […]
The Great Dictator: Farcical Fascism
Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator is one of the most famous films about fascism ever made — and one of the most complicated. Released in 1940, the film was begun in 1938 before Hitler’s invasion of Poland, and arrived in American theaters after the fall of France but before Pearl Harbor. Chaplin, working outside the […]
‘Melania’: When a propagandist message fails to materialize
Before Season 3 gets fully underway, James and Teal take a detour for a special episode on a film that demanded attention: the Amazon documentary Melania, directed by Brett Ratner and released in early 2025 to considerable fanfare — and a reported $70 million in combined acquisition and post-production costs. The episode is less a […]
‘A Special Day’: The Machismo Meet-Cute of 1938
On May 8, 1938, Rome was a stage. Adolf Hitler arrived to meet Benito Mussolini in a choreographed display of aestheticized politics that brought millions into the streets. But while the world’s cameras were focused on the geometric ranks of the parade, Ettore Scola’s 1977 masterpiece, A Special Day (Una giornata particolare), pivots the lens […]
Eddington: Fear is a Fertile Ground
In this episode of Fascism on Film, we talk about Ari Aster’s Eddington—a film set in the earliest days of COVID, right before the murder of George Floyd, when the country was confused, scared, isolated, and primed for political rupture. The movie takes place in a quiet New Mexico town that thinks it’s safe from […]
We’ll Always Have Fascism: ‘Casablanca’
In this episode of Fascism on Film, we look at Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca (1942), one of Hollywood’s most enduring films and one of its quietest acts of persuasion. Beneath the romance and intrigue, Casablanca tells a story of political awakening—about a man, a city, and a country choosing between indifference and action against fascism. We […]
Everyone Loves to Hate a Nazi: ‘Inglourious Basterds’
In this episode, we dig into Quentin Tarantino’s alternate-history thriller and why Nazis became cinema’s “easy plug-in villain.” We frame Inglourious Basterds as “a movie about World War II movies… about how they’re depicted,” and how its set-pieces weaponize film grammar—chapter structure, sustained suspense, and the “threat of violence”—to make the audience complicit in both […]