An American self-critique presented in a compelling documentary style similar to the Russian school of colliding images, Leo Hurwitz’s 1948 Strange Victory serves up a lightning-paced argument that Americans shed their own blood to defeat a genocidal strongman in World War II only to come back to anti-Semitic and anti-black business as usual in the U.S. It’s hard to describe the experience of watching Strange Victory, which draws upon loads of Nazi propaganda footage, newsreels, American-made hate materials, and original images to put forth its thesis that discrimination and violence toward particular groups are practically a common denominator in the human race. Hurwitz’s rapid-fire edits featuring incendiary material capture the filmmaker’s passion and rage toward American hypocrisy. And on the quirky side, a long middle section concerns babies and new mothers; it’s like a composer suddenly changing the key in a piece of music to open up an unexpected, mysterious world. Hurwitz—a pioneering documentarian, CBS producer, and blacklisted left-winger—was an interesting figure, and his Strange Victory paints a portrait of post-WWII American Fascist tendencies that feels quite relevant today. The copious extras include Hurwitz's 1964 epilogue to Strange Victory celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights movement, an excerpt from Ingela Romare’s 1992 documentary On Time, Art, Love, and Trees: A Meeting with Leo T. Hurwitz, an interview with producer Barney Rosset, and six bonus short films featuring Hurwitz as a cinematographer (including Pie in the Sky, starring Elia Kazan). Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (T. Keogh)
Strange Victory
(1948) 71 min. DVD: $34.95, Blu-ray: $39.95. Milestone/Oscilloscope (avail. from most distributors). ISBN: 978-1-933920-956-5 (dvd), 978-1-933920-96-2 (blu-ray). Volume 33, Issue 5
Strange Victory
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