Today, the sentiment expressed in the promotional text on this poster for Warner Brothers' `1944 film, "Passage to Marseilles" is almost literally unimaginable: a mainstream movie company marketing its film to the general public on the explicit claim that it is every freedom-loving person's duty to fight fascism whatever the cost.
That was 1944, when patriotic Americans were fighting fascists, not 2025, as patriotic Americans watch in horror as tens of millions of our fellow citizens are either proudly showing themselves to be fascists, or cravenly capitulating to them.
Anyway, the text is a little hard to read, so here you go:
"PASSAGE TO MARSEILLE", starring Humphrey Bogart, is the story of an outcast ... forgotten by, but not forgetting, the land that banished him ... and of how jungle and shackles and mutiny could not stop him from going home.
Entertainment? Certainly! For entertainment is our business - a business in which Warner Brothers is a widely-recognized leader.
And that leadership is based on this Company's ability to make one picture satisfy two values!
One value is entertainment.
The other is best expressed in a long-standing Warner Bros. policy ... of producing films that will help to champion the basic freedoms of democracy.
You've seen that policy applied in "This Is The Army", "Air Force", "Princess O'Rourke", "Destination Tokyo", "Watch On The Rhine", "In Our Time", and many other Warner Bros. pictures
Be sure to see it again in "PASSAGE TO MARSEILLE", "THE ADVENTURES OF MARK TWAIN" "UNCERTAIN GLORY" and other Warner pictures soon to come! Then you'll know why the New York Times referred to this Company's "enviable record for combining good citizenship with good picture-making".
WARNER BROS.
JACK L WARNER, Executive Producer
A media corporation Selling a movie based on the fundamental virtue of killing Nazis... and winning praise from The New York Times for it's good citizenship?
What a concept!
Especially considering that, 81 years later, media giant Netflix -- which streams some of Warner Brothers most popular movies -- is trying to sell the public on the virtue of not taking sides against fascists because, y'know, Both Sides.
Both Sides Don't
3 comments:
I think we should begin marketing Mars as the new riviera planet for Billionaires.
What is not for them to like?
No labor unions.
No Taxes.
No government politicians to have to by.
Land to grave as far as they can see.
No regulations at all.
No peon riff raff with pitch forks.
No climate change
The list is long. If we can get them to go. We can then get on with civilization here.
We know Elmo wants to go. He just wants someone else to take the first risk to see if it is accomplished safely. He can be the lead sales person.
It is that or make it a planet penal colony for republicans.
Fiona Hill at the impeachment hearing opened her remarks by saying in essence that we fought WWII against fascism. No "we" didn't. Some did. Many did. Not at all. Not by a long shot.
It is this incomprehension or blind spot that's weighed on me for 50 years.
MrsSSGT and I streamed this on Max last night and it is incredible and well with everyone's time. Directed by Michael Curtiz BTW of "Casablanca".
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