Filming the unspeakable: Commerce, conscience, and the ethics of representing atrocity

“ What more material can the publicity exponent desire than lies here within his reach—the film for perfect propaganda work? It only needs to be utilized. By means of one human effort for the creation of such a film, its duplication to any number, its use either in the libraries, the local cinema, or public hall, the whole of the population of England could be enlightened simultaneously or gradually, and the efforts of the publicists would be rewarded by the Public Library being placed in its right sphere as an educational institution ”

“ This appalling problem is sapping the vitality of the nation, and every means of giving publicity to this menace, which, unfortunately, is not on the wane, should be used. We have the best possible publicity agent in the film. Such a film could be prepared and exhibited to initiate the ignorant, and to show those who practise in it that something is being done openly to expose this illicit traffic.
One reads in the newspapers almost daily of wrecked lives, fathers who have shot their daughters and then themselves, because she has trodden the downward path ”

“ Battling communism has never been easy in a town where Sam Goldwyn once confessed: “I’d hire the devil himself as a writer if he gave me a good story.”
Dore Schary and Metro came to a parting of the ways over a “message” picture in 1943. He wanted to film a script called Storm in the West, which was to be a sort of Western, only the villains would be easily identifiable as Hitler and Mussolini. Metro’s executive committee wouldn’t swallow that, but Schary refused to yield, and Mayer released him pronto from his $2000 a week contract. ”

“ We speedily discovered that the most rabid anti-British and wildly patriotic German shopkeeper always succumbs to business. When patriotism is pitted against pounds, shillings and pence, patriotism can go hang.
One of Major Bach's most diabolical acts of savagery was the closing of the canteens in the camp to prisoners. This was the last straw, because now we were compelled to subsist upon the slender and disgusting fare served from the official cook-house. ”

“ To repair the injustice and the cruel omissions of history, is a noble mission and as patriotic as any that ever moved men to deeds of valor and sacrifice. It is not for us to keep alive the memory of those who have their place in the imperishable annals of our country—but it is for us to rescue from oblivion the men that lived and worked and wrought, whom historical writers by accident, indifference or design, have ignored in their researches, or buried in a foot note at the bottom of a page. ”

“ The Reich Leader SS has promised SS Brigadefuehrer Professor Clauberg that Auschwitz concentration camp will be at his disposal for his experiments on human beings and animals. By means of some fundamental experiments, a method should be found which would lead to sterilization of persons without their knowledge. The Reich Leader SS wanted to get another report as soon as the result of these experiments was known, so that the sterilization of Jewesses could then be carried out in actuality. ”

“ Ames, in his desperation over impending disaster, applied to the Federal government at Washington for United States troops to be used in terrorizing the people on election day. He boldly declared that the death of a few thousand negroes would make sure the success of the Republican party, and did everything in his power to bring about an armed conflict between the two races. Bloody riots occurred at Clinton, Yazoo City and Vicksburg, in which hundreds of negroes were killed. President Grant refused to send Federal troops into Mississippi, and his refusal was based on the report of Mr. ”

“ He is still a human being, and possesses all those rights of which he is not deprived by the positive provisions of the law,—but in vain shall we look for any law passed by the enlightened and philanthropic legislature of this state giving to the master power over the life of the slave. Such a statute would be worthy the age of Wraco or Caligula, and would be condemned by the unanimous voice of the people of this state, where cruelty, even, to slaves, much less the taking away of life, meets with universal reprobation.... ”

“ During the whole the director has been the busiest man on the spot. Each motion of the player has been accompanied by a command from him, but it is not for the player to let the camera know that he is listening for these words. By holding a slate covered with figures in front of the camera before the scene was photographed this strip of film now bears its own index figure to aid the factory later in assembling the complete picture. ”

“ In film production the British would create an improvement in their films if some of the American methods were copied. It is the latter’s custom to secure the presence of the author throughout the whole period of production, and his critical judgment and suggestions ensure the exact reproduction of the film as written.
All films are not a failure, far from it. Several British films have been excellently produced, and the plot has remained as originally written. This is what the reading public requires and looks for, especially when they are familiar with the story. ”

“ Arno Meyer, the Professor in Princeton, a Jewish Professor in fact, who published a book called ‘Why Did the Heavens not Darken?’, he revealed in his book that of all the people who died in the concentration camps, including Auschwitz, by far the greatest part died of natural causes, whatever one could call ‘natural causes’ in wartime, I admit, natural causes in wartime are not what you or I would call natural causes today in Victoria. ”

“ Orthodox obscurantism the parent of Sciolism In Myth, Magic, and Morals (Chapter IX) I have remarked that the Church, by refusing to apply in the field of so-called sacred history the canons by which in other fields truth is discerned from falsehood, by beatifying credulous ignorance and anathematizing scholarship and common sense, has surrounded the figure of Jesus with such a nimbus of improbability that it seems not absurd to some critics of to-day to deny that he ever lived. ”

“ Let us remember that History is a constant knowing and learning, the self-knowledge and communion of reflecting spirits in all ages and a perpetual "Know Thyself" to advancing time. There is something indescribably solemn in the historic pausing of Man before the temple of the unknown future and seeking to realize in himself the gnothi seauton or "Know Thyself" of Humanity. He glances backward through the long vista he has traversed and as far as the eye can see, his pathway is cumbered with ruins. ”

“ In the direction of a serial, each chapter of which is usually told in two thousand feet of film, or two-fifths as much as is allotted the average feature picture, the director is faced with the necessity of making every foot of film contain either plot interest or action interest. Pictorial beauty, characterization, atmosphere, 132qualities which sometimes assist the interest of a feature picture to a great extent, are discarded from the slightest contemplation in the direction of a serial, even as similar elements are discarded in the writing of the magazine serial story. ”

“ In this state the Legislature have considered slaves as reasonable and accountable beings, and it would be a stigma upon the character of the state, and a reproach to the administration of justice if the life of a slave could be taken with impunity,—if he could be murdered in cold blood, without subjecting the offender to the highest penalty known to the criminal jurisprudence of the county. Has the slave no rights because he is deprived of his freedom? ”

“ But written history often becomes shot-riddled by criticism and is set away, at last, like battle-flags, after many honorable campaigns, in some museums of relics or some temple of fame. Unless such trophies continue to awaken in the living present a sort of enthusiasm and a sense of unity with the past experience of our race, then are our historic standards but antiquarian rubbish, indeed, as useless and unmeaning as the banners and symbols of heraldry.
The subject of History is the self-conscious development of the human race, the Ego of Humanity. ”

“ To live merely in the present, without regard to the past, is to be careless of the future. If a people do not know their own history it is the same as if they had no history. For, a Bacon says, in one of his pregnant sentences: "The truth of knowing and the truth of being is all one; the man is what he knoweth." ”

“ But how fares it with that company of men and women who, frequently in obscure places and by unpretentious methods, have in the realms of discovery, invention and ethics, also advanced the prosperity and happiness of society? It must be admitted that they are too often neglected and that the fruitful lessons which their lives have to communicate remain too generally unappropriated. This paper, diverging somewhat from the beaten highway of history, has for its purpose, to rescue from threatened oblivion the memory of a noble man and the record of his monumental work. ”

“ But Literature loves a lost cause, provided honor be not lost. Hector, the leader of the vanquished Trojans, is the most princely figure that the Greek Homer has portrayed; the Roman Virgil is proud to trace the lineage of his people not back to the victorious Greeks but to the defeated Trojans; the English poet-laureate finds his deepest inspiration not in the victories of his Saxon ancestors over King Arthur but in King Arthur himself, the fated leader of a losing cause. And so it has always been: the brave but unfortunate reap always the richest measure of literary immortality. ”

“ The noblest treasure of any State is the memory of its heroic dead. Recorded in books, their deeds soon fail from the common memory and are recollected only by students. But a monument erected in a great city which meets the eye and holds the attention of every passer-by is a perpetual reminder and an unfailing incentive to emulation. ”