‘One Battle After Another’: Which America do you live in?
In this episode of Fascism on Film, we turn to Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another—the first contemporary release we’ve ever covered—and explore why its explosive, relentless energy belongs in a conversation about authoritarianism. We talk about the film’s stunning VistaVision photography, its overwhelming momentum, and what it was like to experience it in […]
The Mistake of Identity: ‘Mr. Klein’
In this episode of the Fascism on Film Podcast, we discuss Joseph Losey’s 1976 masterpiece Mr. Klein, set in Nazi-occupied France. Alain Delon plays Robert Klein, a Paris art dealer who profits from the desperation of Jewish families forced to sell their belongings before deportation. He’s confident and comfortable in his privilege—until a Jewish newspaper […]
Finding the Courage: ‘This Land Is Mine’
Jean Renoir’s This Land Is Mine (1943) turns a Hollywood wartime drama into a story about fear, conscience, and the quiet choice to resist. Made after Renoir fled Vichy France, the film follows Albert Lory (Charles Laughton), a shy schoolteacher who must face his own cowardice under Nazi occupation.
The Question of Fascism: ‘To Be or Not to Be’
Fascism on Film takes a sharp, funny, and surprisingly emotional look at Ernst Lubitsch’s 1942 wartime satire To Be or Not to Be—a screwball comedy about a Polish theater troupe who find themselves impersonating Nazis, outwitting Gestapo agents, and flying to safety in Hitler’s own airplane. What starts as a lighthearted romp through mistaken identities […]
Remembering Fascism: ‘Amarcord’
In this episode, we return to Italy through memory, ritual, and the absurd pageantry of daily life. Federico Fellini’s Amarcord (which means “I remember” in Romagnol dialect) recreates a year in the life of a small provincial town under Mussolini’s fascism. The result is both whimsical and damning. At first glance, Amarcord looks like a […]
Hiding from Fascism: ‘The Garden of the Finzi-Continis’
In this episode, we turn to Vittorio De Sica’s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, an Oscar-winning adaptation of Giorgio Bassani’s semi-autobiographical novel. Set in Ferrara during the late 1930s, the film follows an aristocratic Jewish family who retreat behind the walls of their estate as Mussolini’s racial laws begin to strip away Jewish rights. Their […]
The Italian In Crowd: ‘The Conformist’
In this episode of the Fascism on Film Podcast, we look at Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970), a story about Marcello Clerici, a man in Mussolini’s Italy sent to Paris to spy on—and kill—his former professor, a socialist in exile. It’s also a study of how personal weakness and the desire to “fit in” can […]
America Anti-fascism: ‘Black Legion’ and ‘Confessions of a Nazi Spy’
In this episode of Fascism on Film, we turn to late-1930s America, an anxious nation watching as authoritarian movements surged abroad and felt their reverberations at home. Long before the United States entered World War II, Hollywood began shaping stories that confronted this threat directly, laying the groundwork for an early tradition of anti‑fascist cinema […]
Proto-fascism: The Birth of a Nation
On this week’s episode, the Fascism on Film Podcast tears into one of the most repugnant films of all time: “The Birth of a Nation.”
A Storm Approaches: ‘The Mortal Storm’
In this episode, we talk about The Mortal Storm (1940), Frank Borzage’s quietly devastating portrait of a German family caught in the first months of Nazi rule. …