When I was a kid, in a communist country, in the bloody '80s, the innumerable soviet war movies, Manicheistic and propagandistic, had already been chased out of the movie theaters (and out of the TV programs as well); so I was 23 when I have seen my first soviet movie with a WW 2 subject (a Ciuhrai, or Tchukhray movie, 'The 41st', which I very much enjoyed). The soviet WW 2 movies have their admirers—and not for ideological reasons. Was there anything else in them —besides propaganda and obviousness? They resemble each other, stylistically—a high—voltage style, low budgets, overacting, very straight narratives, standard lines, poor scripts, exalted patriotism. Qualitatively, some were very good, others—less so, others—average, still others—bad, and perhaps many—unbearably silly and distasteful. They're not history, but mythology. In the '50s, they flooded other communist countries. Those who have seen many such flicks admit that, though the subjects were silly, the movies were relatively well made, and on a low—budget; and others resent them, seeing in them only propaganda tools.
Common people generally don't read much; but they see movies. So this is the way to indoctrinate them. In the 20th century, under leftist dictatorships (Russia—mainly from Lenin to Brejnev, Vietnam, North Correa, China), the cinemas have been used, due to their too obvious popular appeal, as huge propaganda machines, sharp tools of brainwashing, for fomenting various forms of national communism and patriotic awareness and for filling the minds with clichés and propagandistic silliness and atrocious slogans; in a different way, the same is true for the Hollywoodian cinema (and speaking only about an openly politic leftist trend, from Trumbo to Sean Penn, countless propagandists work in the area; Teachout dislikes these guys, Ebert hails them, I am a reader and admirer of both Teachout and Ebert, and I find Teachout better than Ebert). On the other hand, under milder circumstances, in moderate socialist regimes, awesome national cinema schools flourished (Poland, the Czechs, Hungary, even Yugoslavia to some degree; of course, Russian and the other soviet republics after the '50s).
As I never cease repeating, I am a die-hard aficionado of the soviet cinema.
Common people generally don't read much; but they see movies. So this is the way to indoctrinate them. In the 20th century, under leftist dictatorships (Russia—mainly from Lenin to Brejnev, Vietnam, North Correa, China), the cinemas have been used, due to their too obvious popular appeal, as huge propaganda machines, sharp tools of brainwashing, for fomenting various forms of national communism and patriotic awareness and for filling the minds with clichés and propagandistic silliness and atrocious slogans; in a different way, the same is true for the Hollywoodian cinema (and speaking only about an openly politic leftist trend, from Trumbo to Sean Penn, countless propagandists work in the area; Teachout dislikes these guys, Ebert hails them, I am a reader and admirer of both Teachout and Ebert, and I find Teachout better than Ebert). On the other hand, under milder circumstances, in moderate socialist regimes, awesome national cinema schools flourished (Poland, the Czechs, Hungary, even Yugoslavia to some degree; of course, Russian and the other soviet republics after the '50s).
As I never cease repeating, I am a die-hard aficionado of the soviet cinema.