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THE FILM SINCE THEN
afford to offend too openly the national sentiments of other countries. More basically, one concludes, the policy had its origin in Goebbels' calculated decision never to allow Nazi principles to be discussed by the Germans (and thereby called into question). Nazi propaganda did not seek to convince but to impress. Consequently, such films as had direct propagandist inspiration generally concealed their aims or revealed them only briefly. They resembled Freudian dreams in that the principal ' wish ', deeply embedded in irrelevant material, would appear in disguise and only for a moment. Creative and technical skill were customarily spent on the surrounding structure rather than on the central idea, embellishing the course of events with all sorts of corroborative details so as to induce a receptive and credulous frame of mind. A typical example of this occurs in a film the title of which I regret I cannot recall. It begins during World War I, and for many reels we follow the comic and dramatic war experiences of four infantry comrades so closely that we feel an intimate party to their friendship. Abruptly the war ends, the soldiers part, and it is ten years before we see them again. They are as distant now as once they were close : one an industrial magnate, another a Tyrolean farmer, the third a ruined speculator, and the last a schoolmaster. The magnate conceives the quaint idea of inviting them all — with wives and children — to a reunion at his mansion, and, even more quaintly, constructs the replica of a dugout in his drawing room, the better to conjure up the atmosphere of their former comradeship. Needless to say, this bit of legerdemain fails in its effect; the intervening years and experiences have divided them utterly, and the dugout rendezvous results in a violent altercation which centres around political differences. Up to this point the film has been shrewdly managed. One is involved with the feelings of the characters, and their political views are seen to grow very believably out of the lot in which they have individually been cast in the post-war world. The outlines of reality are present here. But suddenly in the middle of the
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