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 […]
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 […]