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THE SPECTATOR 161
indirection— showing events and situations seemingly unconnected with the message they impart— the greater the chance that they reach unconscious fixations and bodily tendencies which might have a bearing, however distant, on the championed cause.
Many propaganda films, documentaries or not, try to canalize inner dispositions. Having learned from the Russians of the 'twenties,* the Nazi film makers, with their reliance on instincts, were masters in the art of mobilizing the twilight regions of the mind. Take that flashback scene in their triumphant war documentary, Victory in the West, in which French soldiers are seen mingling with Negroes and dancing in the Maginot Line: these excerpts, which the Nazis put together from French film material they had captured, were obviously calculated to make the spectator infer that the French are flippant and degenerate and thus to lure him spontaneously— by means of psychological mechanisms of which he would hardly be aware— into the camp of the wholesome and dynamic victors.17 It was debunking in a way, or rather, sham-debunking; and the recourse to it most certainly played a role in manipulating the spectator's mind. The complete absence of verbal comment further increased the challenging power of the images, which made them all the more able to stir up in him organic dislikes and sympathies, confused fears, and dim expectations. And his knowledge that they were wellauthenticated disposed of any scruples he might initially have entertained about their validity.
This leads to another reason for the effectiveness of film propaganda, a reason, though, which applies exclusively to documentary films. They are supposed to be true to fact; and is not truth the best propaganda weapon? Whenever a documentary succeeds in swaying the minds, part of its success is due to the spectator's conviction that he is in the presence of irrefutable evidence. Everybody tends to believe that pictures taken on the spot cannot lie. Obviously they can. Assuming a film passed off as a neutral documentary does not include scenes staged for the purpose in mind but confines itself, as it should, to rendering reality pure and simple —there is, however, no way for the spectator to make sure whether he is getting his money's worth— yet it may feature certain aspects of a given object at the expense of others and thus influence our approach to it. The actual shots are of necessity a selection from among possible shots.
Other factors are operative also. A change in lighting, and one and the same face appears in a new guise. (This is confirmed by a fascinating experiment which the German photographer Helmar Lerski made in
* It was Goebbels who praised Potemkin as a model and told the German film makers that they should glorify the Nazi "revolution" by similar films. See Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler, p. 289.