It Happened Here (1964) User Reviews

Memorable

[alan-morton · 8/10 · 30 September 2004]

The film sticks tenaciously in the memory, in a way that slick studio productions often fail to do.

Visually, a fair bit of the film is a pastiche of German propaganda newsreels, or borrows from that library of pictures. This augments the feeling of realism and makes it an even bigger shock to see German troops marching through London, or relaxing off-duty, taking in the sights and admiring the women. No studio film would dare to take such an approach. And where did they find so much genuine-looking equipment? No studio film-researcher would ever be that scrupulous about accuracy.

The sound-recording is dreadful and it would benefit from one of those clever clean-up jobs that are available these days. But what is said, and how it's said, are unforgettable. The wrong-headed justifications of Fascism that pepper this film sound like real people's words and they're spoken by what clearly are real people, who are taking a little time off from their real jobs to appear in the film. For instance, the fat, middle-aged, bureaucratic bully who voices many of the arguments has to have been in real life a school teacher or a bank manager: he looks and sounds the part in a way that studio actors working from a polished script could never manage.

The ending is forced, but only because you feel that the film would be endless without a forced ending. Although a lot of things take place that are genuinely shocking (I won't list them as I'd have to announce spoilers), the point of the film isn't to relate a narrative that has a defined beginning, middle and end. The point is to make you feel that this is all real and make you wonder what your response would have been if the Nazis had started running your country.

Nazis in England? You'll believe it!

[Eegah Guy · 7/10 · 4 April 2001]

What's most amazing about this film is that it was made by teenagers and looks good even for being shot in 16mm. Seeing Nazis goose-stepping in front of various UK landmarks and is pretty upsetting and totally convincing. The narrative loses a lot of steam after an hour (I think this film was expanded from a short) but the faked newsreel shown in a cinema halfway through the movie is totally flawless in its imitation of German propaganda films.

The perfect companion piece to "Went the Day Well"

[MOscarbradley · 6/10 · 14 October 2015]

Like Peter Watkin's "The War Game" which came out around the same time and which imagined life, or what was left of it, in Britain after a nuclear attack, Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo's "It Happened Here" imagines a Britain under the jackboot as if Hitler had succeeded in invading after the retreat at Dunkirk and like "The War Game" is filmed as if it were a documentary. If it has a fault it's that the acting, by a largely non-professional cast, feels distinctly am-dram. Otherwise this is a chilling portrait of a country under occupation, superbly shot by the great Peter Suschitzky and Brownlow. Interestingly, it shows that the British resistance could be just as brutal as the Germans are usually shown in this kind of film, making this the perfect companion piece to Cavalcanti's masterpiece "Went the Day Well".

Interesting mockumentary.....

[CurtHerzstark · 15 April 2012]

This film has one of the oddest production histories that I've ever heard about. Kevin Brownlow was appearantly only 18 years old when he came up with this idea and asked his then 16 year old friend Andrew Mollo if he could help out. It took them 8 years and with help from Stanley Kubrick,Tony Richardson, etc they managed to get film made.

With that said it is astonishing film albeit flawed like so many other debut films but in this case the benefits outweighs the flaws. This is simple story about a nurse (in what has become nazi occupied UK)who must join the nazi party in order to feed herself. Even though her political views are different she has no choice, and joins but soon ends up in more trouble then before.

The biggest problem with this film for me is the very bad audio, sometimes the young directors don't seem to know what kind of story they want to tell. Also some of the acting is flawed but becomes even more creepy when you know that some of the actors were real English neo Nazis.

But this must be one of the best alternative history films I have ever seen so far. The film gives off a really good authentic feeling, something many films today lacks.

And the ending serves as reminder of fascism, war crimes, evil that men do, regardless of political views.

This film took almost over a decade to complete!

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 17 May 2012]

The history of the making of "It Happened Here" is pretty amazing. Think about it...Kevin Brownlow was 19 and his friend, Andrew Mollow, 16 when they started making a film. These two completely untrained teens worked, on and off, on a film and completely it about a decade later--with a budget of only about $20,000!! And you'd assume such a project would look like crap--but it doesn't. Using lots of seemingly documentary footage and mostly non-professional actors, they made an alternative history film that looks for all the world like a traditional documentary. The premise--that Germany conquered Britain during WWII. Now I am NOT saying this is a brilliant film or that it's Oscar-worthy material--but considering all it was up against, it's a wonderful film for young filmmakers and film students to watch in order to see what you can do with a minimal budget and lots of energy.

The film begins in England in 1944. Although you see plenty of German soldiers running about, many more of those in authority are Pro-Nazi collaborators--and they willingly take to anti-Semetism and the usual Nazi rhetoric. While this notion offended many when the film debuted in 1966, this was a realistic scenario, as locals did work hand in hand with the Nazis in many countries--such as in France and the Ukraine. According to the film, these local fascists were needed because the war against the Soviets was not going well and they needed all the troops they could spare (just like what really happened in WWII).

The story focuses on an Irish nurse who goes to work with the fascist British government. She is mostly apolitical but over time, she is forced to take a stand--particularly because her job sometimes entails committing atrocities in her role as a nurse. What is she to do? Play it safe and work with the authorities or become part of the Resistance? This is a film whose concept is far better than the actual film--and with good reasons. Because writer/director Brownlow was filming this on the cheap, he used 16mm film and the sound was often quite poor--especially at the beginning. There are also many lulls and scenes which look as if they should have been re-shot. While amateurish looking, it actually is surprising that the film looks as good as it does! After all, the filmmakers really were in way over their heads. But they manage to produce some effectively grisly scenes involving atrocities and the killing of Nazis by the Resistance. I also was very impressed with the pro-Nazi propaganda film that was shown in the theater--it looked quite real. And considering the film's background, it's far better than it should be. All in all, an amazing accomplishment but a film that could use some editing and polish. For the average person, it's a bit too tedious to take seriously but for film students and cinephiles, it's quite fascinating.

A remarkable piece

[tobydale · 7/10 · 19 May 2022]

"It Happened Here" is remarkable.

Somewhere along the line back around 1970 this was on TV in the UK and I watched it as a 12-year-old. I remember being stunned by it then. I have just watched it again after a gap of 52 years. It's still remarkable.

When this was made in 1964, the war was a "recent" memory. Plenty of people alive then had direct actual experience of war as adults. The "British" cultural memory was being formed in those years, and it reverberates today. I grew up in that environment.

I'm not sure that a film like "It Happened Here" could be made in Britain today. We have forgotten the actual experience of war and the impact it had here in reality. Very few people now have direct experience. Instead, we have stereotypes and myths. We have literally thousands of people engaged in "re-enactment" days or weekends. They dress up in facsimile German uniforms and flounce around as if it's clever. It's not clever.

The Nazi cult was vile and repressive. This was understood in a different way in 1964 to how it is understood today. Back then, Nazism was understood as insidious - it worked from the inside exercising it's power through propaganda, denounciations and control. "It Happened Here" shows us this world - the world we would have had.

The film itself is limited. Obviously made by amateurs on a limited budget in a different world. But it's ambitious in scope and daring. It was deliberately provocative - designed to challenge the world of 1964 and point out how dangerous right-wing thinking is.

Still a very remarkable piece.

Awesome pseudo-documentary footage

[Mark-343 · 9/10 · 30 August 1999]

Ignore Leonard Maltin's comments - he's clearly missed the point of the film. The "Brits" don't keep a stiff upper lip, and the cooperation between them and the Nazis is shocking. The documentary footage of Nazi soldiers parading around London etc appears ever so real. The awesome photography makes up for the weak plot and main character. A must-see.

The Battle of Algiers is another such film which mixes documentary with drama.

Interesting, but not a great movie

[Penfold-13 · 7/10 · 31 August 1999]

A previous reviewer couldn't recommend the film too highly and said you owe it to yourself to see this.

I can't go along with that.

A lot of British people have tried to cheer themselves up with the thought that Hitlerism could never have taken root in Britain, because we're all so jolly decent and we'd never have put up with Onkel Adi.

This film does a pretty good job of saying "Bull***t!" to that idea. Collaborating with the occupying power is a fairly obvious strategy for people who want a quiet life, or hope for advancement in the new society, because they don't believe that the occupation will be defeated.

And if state-managed news media tell you only what they want you to hear, and portray things in an extremely odd light, then it's not surprising that people start to believe this stuff and spout it themselves.

The basic narrative device is to follow the adventures of an Irish nurse who claims to have little experience of or interest in politics. She loses her friends to an attack by the resistance partisans, signs up, after some agonising, to nurse with the Nazi Action Brigade, and then has some experiences which ought to open her eyes to the immoral horror of Nazism. It's a pretty useful device: she gets to see both sides of things, so the audience does too. But we don't find out, really, what she thinks of these things: the film-makers obviously intend the audience to draw their own conclusions.

The message of this film is uncompromisingly bleak. Men and women are capable of much worse than they think; fascism is a disease so virulent that one needs to adopt some of its own methods to have a chance of defeating it, and very few people are immune to its temptations (especially when agreement makes for a much less uncomfortable life).

It's a very earnest film, but it isn't very interesting dramatically. Showing that ordinary people are susceptible requires that the events be fairly routine (in context), otherwise the audience can put the behaviour of which they would obviously disapprove down to the effects of special circumstances. That's honest, but drab, ordinary lives tend to make for drab, ordinary stories, and this is no exception.

I'd recommend watching it, but don't expect it to be the highlight of your viewing week.

What Would You Do?

[Facade · 9/10 · 5 September 1999]

This film was shown recently as part of the Channel 4 War Weekend. I found it to be well made, and contained some very powerful images, of the German forces in occupation.

My only reservation is that I found it difficult to track the passage of time within the film.

The film deals with a woman, who is relocated to London, following Partisan activity at her home village. She becomes a Collaborator, not particularly from choice, but from circumstance. She is faced with a simple choice: work for the state, or don't eat. The film presents the Partisans as terrorists, whose methods differ little from the Nazis, although their objectives are purer. The film certainly made me think more about the life of the civilian in occupied territory. You could become a partisan, and act as a terrorist, or work for the forces of occupation, either directly, or indirectly. Or you could starve.

Well, what would you do?

IT HAPPENED HERE (Kevin Brownlow & Andrew Mollo, 1965) ***

[Bunuel1976 · 7/10 · 7 January 2014]

This famous pseudo-documentary depicts what would potentially have occurred had the Nazi invasion of Britain during WWII been successful. It presents an interesting conjecture, to be sure, but one wonders what point was being made so long after the threat had been nipped in the bud, as it were…unless an analogous contemporaneous scenario (say, the Communist oppression rife in Eastern European countries) was being addressed!

Anyway, the background to the movie under review is itself worth documenting: writer/director/cinematographer/editor Brownlow is best- known as a champion of film preservation (whose sterling work in the field was recently rewarded with an Honorary Oscar!); he was slated to introduce a September 2002 screening I attended of Erich von Stroheim's THE WEDDING MARCH (1928) at London's National Film Theatre but he eventually relegated it to an underling! Besides, Brownlow and his collaborator Mollo were still in their teens when they began work on IT HAPPENED HERE – which took some 7 years to complete! With this in mind, the semi-professional approach (some of it shot on 16mm stock, a cast almost exclusively made-up of unknowns and, reportedly, including Peter Watkins – himself an award-winning documentarist/movie director!) gives the whole an appropriate cine'-verite' feel.

The episodic narrative follows the exploits of a female nurse who, witnessing the violence by a partisan group perpetrated on both the occupying German forces and collaborationist officials, misguidedly joins the local Nationalist Socialist movement which has arisen since the Reich's takeover. Visiting old friends, they are shocked to learn of her submission to Fascism – since they were themselves harbouring an injured resistance member and hoping she would help! However, when the couple is handed over to the authorities by a neighbouring cleric(!), she is transferred to a country-side hospital…only to discover that the elderly Jewish patients are being systematically exterminated by the staff! Ultimately, falling into the hands of the partisans herself, she willingly lends medical treatment to the wounded.

Budget, Quality, Time, you can only have one.

[davidfurlotte · 10/10 · 24 September 2011]

I never knew this movie existed and I am still somewhat shocked after just watching this film at the incredible job that was done by a couple of independent film-makers.

If someone had told me prior to seeing this movie that a couple of teenagers had produced an amazing movie based on the occupation of England by the Nazis in World War II, I would have said impossible.

The movie lacks a little in quality because it was shot in 16mm and in some situations lacks the necessary lighting needed to bring off certain scenes, however, as the Summary above states, you can choose only ONE of the three criteria to work with. The producers did not have budget, or top quality equipment, or big name actors to work with, but they DID have time and they used it to create what can only be called a masterpiece.

I have never lived in a country under occupation and I hope that I never will, however, I can understand the need for people to get on with their lives and even the necessity to actually collaborate with an enemy simply to survive.

As it was put to our main actress in this movie, "You can nurse for us or you can stay home and nurse your empty stomach." She had no choice even though she wanted no political affiliation. This is the type of movie that makes you wonder and puts you in the position of saying, "What would I do in that case?" Watch this if you get the chance because it falls into the category that says, "Those who refuse to study history are doomed to repeat it."

Wandering through London

[djrose007-1 · 17 January 2009]

Must have been 1967 when I was based at High Wycombe and often went to London for the day. The film was released during this year and wandered into the cinema. The title and posters intrigued me and I was just killing time.

I was amazed at how realistic this film portrayal was and how quiet the cinema was, not a sound from start to finish. The way ID cards/papers were used, the attitude of some people that collaborated, and the resistance starting to fight back, it was just brilliant.

I'd love to see it again,let's hope it is screened on TV but I don't remember seeing it on TV to date, unless it was during the 80's when I was working abroad.

Nightmarish, stomach-churning fantasy of what England would have been like under German occupation

[Dave-114 · 10/10 · 15 November 1998]

A thought-provoking war drama, which began life as the spare-time project of an 18-year-old film-lover and his 16-year-old friend. Almost an amateur film, but intellectually spell-binding. Based on the counter-factual premise that Britain was successfully invaded following the Dunkirk retreat and liberated by the Americans at the end of World War II. The images of London streets thronged with German soldiers are unforgettable. It is a film concerned with what war and military occupation does to people's minds. Nightmarish, stomach-churning. You owe it to yourself to see this film. Cannot recommend too highly. (Please take a look at my slightly longer review under "Newsgroup Reviews")

A masterpiece

[Rene000 · 10/10 · 24 April 2006]

'It Happened Here' is the only British war film which gives a true and accurate idea of what war is about: it is about civilians.

All war films, with the exception of this one and a tiny handful of others, deal with boys in their uniforms shooting at each other in glorious Technicolour. The army obey codes of engagement and the goodies win. We identify with the heroes and frown at the villains, we feel sad when the second-stringer dies and exhilarated when the actor with the comic role survives, and so on.

Civilians have no such luxury under occupation. This film deals with the dilemmas of surviving. with having to collaborate to a varying extent in order to earn a living, in fact with the real dilemmas which only those who lived through the Nazi occupation can truly understand. Collaboration is a slippery slope, well handled in the film as it is too in the French film 'Lacombe Lucien', where a feckless young man, rebuffed by the resistance, slips almost accidentally into collaboration for a bit of an adventure and some status.

A recent article in the London press explained that the lengthy disquisition on the necessity of fascism in occupied Britain, as voiced by an English militiaman in the film, was in fact a pro-fascist argument put forward by a real leading British fascist, who made use of the film to expound his views. Within the context of the film, the views are seductively subversive and dangerously convincing. Think Goebbels when he presented the war against Russia as a European effort to eliminate the Bolshevist menace. This argument appealed to many 'right-thinking' people in occupied Europe as, barely a couple of years after the war, many right-thinking people thought that the communist menace should be eliminated.

As a result of the filmed fascist diatribe, United Artists ordered Brownlow to remove this section (6 minutes, I think) and the film was originally screened without it.

When the resistance to foreign occupation in Iraq is labelled terrorism, well, that is exactly what the German occupiers said about all resistance movements in Europe. Resistance movements included brigands, double-agents and ruthless operators as well as heroes. At the end of the war, these movements settled scores with collaborators and presumed collaborators, with unofficial executions running into the tens of thousands.

Nothing wrong then, in having the British resistance in this film shown as behaving mercilessly. That is what real war is about and if we can't identify with it, then so much the better for those of us who never had to identify with an armed occupation either.

A remarkable film that is a classic.

[Juneyhod · 10/10 · 25 December 2011]

We owe a debt of gratitude to Brownlow & Mollo for the making of this film. I had never seen it until today, Dec25th 2011.

It's a remarkable film especially when you consider it's meagre budget (said to have been $20,000), the ages of the film's makers, who were 18 & 16 and the eight years it took to produce. Everything about it seems strikingly authentic. The attention to detail is meticulous; the cinematography is inspirational; the subject matter is horrific and so very nearly came to pass; the poor sound quality and grainy black & white adds to the realism; the dark and brooding scenes are terribly atmospheric.

I was born in 1949, close enough to the end of World War II to almost feel I was a part of it. I grew up listening to my parents' recollections and 'the war' has always felt very real to me. So it chills me to the bone to contemplate the England I may have been born into. 'It Happened Here' should act as a warning to today's deluded souls who think Fascism has any place at all in our political spectrum. Anyone who thinks it glorifies Fascism and is anti-Semitic has missed the point completely.

First thing tomorrow I'm going to post it to my 16year old granddaughter studying Government & Politics. It should be made a compulsory part of the school curriculum.

I can't thank Brownlow & Mollo enough for making this film and am just so sorry it took so long to discover it.

Thank god it didn't!

[insomnia · 2 July 2002]

Being a Londoner, and born but a few months after England declared war on

Germany, this film has always held a special significance for me. I originally saw it when it opened in London: a mere twelve years after the worst war in living memory, had ended. I saw it for the second time recently at a friend's house. To me, it is still the best film about the occupation of a country by a foreign army. In his book, "How It Happened Here", co-director, Kevin Brownlow explains how he got the idea to

make this film. He just happened to be walking down a London street, at the

moment when a car screeched to a halt outside a shop. Four or so heavyset

men piled out of the car. They were dressed, recalls Brownlow, in grey

overcoats in a style reminiscent of Russian KGB agents. All were bulky and

acted in a furtive manner. It got Brownlow thinking: "what if....."

On a budget that can only be described as miniscule, it took Brownlow and his co-director, Andrew Mollo, eight years to complete the film. It's shot in a

quasi-documentary style, which makes it even more realistic. Their attention to detail is amazing considering the paucity of funds available - every uniform the actors wore was sewn by Mrs. Mollo. While I can't claim to personally 'remember' those years when London was

bombed constantly, I can recall the sound, or should I say lack of it (we were all inside a bomb shelter), when a German V-2 rocket (nicknamed a doodle-bug),

ran out of fuel and plummeted to the ground. We were lucky: it landed but a few streets away, killing many, many people, breaking windows, shaking chimneys and covering all our possesions in a thick layer of soot!

Grim, stark, fascinating

[Tender-Flesh · 10/10 · 12 May 2010]

I don't hand out 1's and 10's often, and while the production on this film is quite low, with the sound quality for dialogue being the absolute worst, this film is totally compelling and you will be grateful you gave it a chance.

The movie is shot as a pseudo documentary, following the life of Pauline, a strangely attractive nurse who must relocate to London in a world where Nazi Germany has more than a foothold in England; Soldiers occupy the nation and many British citizens have become their collaborators. You should read the interesting history behind the making of this film which took something like 6 years to complete, if you can believe it. But wait until after you watch the movie, of course. I'm glad I didn't know much about it before I began watching. Fans of science fiction, dystopian fiction, and Orwell will eat this up and want more.

This is a war film like few others in that you don't see much of the war itself, by that I mean the front lines. You see the daily life of citizens in a country where all their normal daily routines have been stamped out and they are recast in the roles of pseudo-Nazis whether they like it or not. What are you waiting for?

It Still Happens Today

[Theo Robertson · 8/10 · 7 January 2017]

Someone decides to make their own feature film ? Don't tell me , I know what's coming next - a zombie apocalypse filmed on someones mobile phone ? Well that's what happens in the 21st Century but away back in the mid 1950s two ambitious amateur film makers Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo pulled out all the stops to make an alternative neo-realist film featuring a scenario where Operation Sealion was a success and Britain is under the fascist jackboot and these two idealists managed to pull out all the stops . All I really know about the behind the scenes story is that it took them eight years and seven thousand pounds sterling of their own finance to produce it

From a technical point of view IT HAPPENED HERE is somewhat crude . Filmed in black and white it resists the temptation to intercut real life footage of the second world war and instead everything on screen is pre-filmed for the camera . I'd be very interested in hearing amusing anecdotes about the production . Did the makers get strange reactions by asking where they could get some Waffen SS uniforms for example ? It is amazing that the production team gained access to so much military hardware and equipment . If there's a downside it's that the directors can't help showing off Nazi marching bands walking along the streets of London . Another negative is that the sound-mix is very poor

It's the screenplay that makes up for any limitations in the mis-en-scene . One annoyance is that "England" is constantly mentioned throughout . I take it the Nazis stopped at the borders of Wales and Scotland or more likely the writers have euphemistically used the term England when they mean Britain/UK . As a Celt this upset me slightly then I quickly forgave them because the story quickly nails human nature under occupation . There's not really a central plot but this doesn't matter in the slightest because human nature is put under the spotlight and without pluralist democracy human nature knows no bounds when it comes to inhumanity

By this I mean very few people would set you on fire , but by the same yardstick very few people would lift a finger to help you if you were on fire . Truth be told few people would p*ss on you if you were on fire . You ever worked for a corporate company ? I have worked for several and universally they operate in the same way a one party state does . Most people are indifferent to the company , they see it as a means to an end as in getting paid to feed their families and never lose their decency as humans or as colleagues . This isn't enough for some people . They are in a minority but give such people an inch of power and they shall take light years . Be thankful that democracy doesn't allow such people to rise to the top .

If there's one problem with the film's politics it's equating the resistance not being all that different from the methods employed by the fascists and the film is book ended in that both sides have the justification of "If you're not for us you're against us". I can understand what the makers are trying to do but is it actually true that "The appalling thing about fascism is that you've got to use fascist methods to get rid of it." Presently in Syria the Kurdish YPG and their Arab comrades in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are engaged in a war against Daesh and the fascist Assad government who are backed by proxies from Russia , Iran and Turkey and yet never stoop to the methods of the regime they are fighting . That said in my own experience of politics there's a noticeable similarity between the far left and far right in that the world is constantly manipulated by a race of outsiders . Fascists use the word "Jewry" while leftists use the word "Zionists" and only the phraseology is different

If nothing else IT HAPPENED HERE gives an interesting window on the world of what things would be like if the Nazis had won the Battle Of Britain . Perhaps the most scary thing is that it's a world not a million miles removed from our own corporate Western world where "We don't accept your decisions. You accept ours." . Don't be glad you live in a democracy . Be sad it's never going to be democratic enough

Great Film and the book is about to be re-issued

[richard-harris-1 · 9/10 · 5 April 2005]

yes this was a fine example of 'what if'. It certainly makes you think about how it might have been had Hitler succeeded.

The book 'How It Happened Here' is due to be re-issued with a revised content and updates.

The new book 'How It Happened Here' should be out in August but check availability on amazon or at the publishers website ukapress.com

The DVD for this film is also available now with a great review on dvdtalk.com http://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s100here.html

In all, it's a film that hasn't had enough exposure. The concept is frightening and the idea should be bought back into the mind of a new generation. It is horrifying to think how close England came to being ruled by an unspeakable dictator.

It looks like real

[RodrigAndrisan · 10/10 · 11 April 2017]

A very special film about something that never happened but it could have happen: the conquest of Britain by Nazi Germany. Incredibly well done, like a true documentary. All the actors do an excellent job, not about to play a role, you say that everything is filmed "live", every character in their daily life under the occupation of Hitler's army. I have seen many movies about the Second World War, more or less inspired by reality. But not one does look so real like this film looks, whose subject is not true at all.

If the Nazis had come

[yorimevets-130-485246 · 8/10 · 29 January 2015]

There was a paperback titled If The Nazis Had Come on bookstore shelves around the time It Happened Here was released. I didn't read it, but I did rent the VHS from Video Vault before it closed its doors forever. I found the film to be plausible because there was a great deal of sympathy for both Mussolini and Hitler particularly among the upper middle class. Think Miss Jeanne Brodie and Unity Mitford. Chamberlain was weak and despised, and many Britons would have welcomed Hitler with open arms.

In this film German troops are seen milling about Trafalgar Square, but the film subtly reminds that they are Englishmen who joined the Wehrmacht -- just as you can find them in the French Foreign Legion. The Germans had left the British Isles to fight the Russians. Some viewers will be offended by the newsreel footage that explains the Jewish problem. And some viewers will find it hilarious. Despite its low budget, the producers did a good job with the backdrops and posters.

Definitely worth watching.

Not For The Average American Viewer

[dreadnaught33 · 8/10 · 19 April 2003]

Upon first viewing It Happened Here, I was struck by the poor quality of the film. However, further viewings revealed the use of poor quality to be intentional. After reading of Brownlow's financial struggles in making the film, I'm awed at his creative use of available funds. I say that this film is not for the average American viewer for two simple reasons. One is that the average viewer does not typically appreciate ideological/experimental films, and this film is most certainly that. The second is because of the internationality of this film. The typical American viewer is used to seeing a quick plot development, usually intertwined with some sort of attention-keeper (explosions, comedy). The British of this film can be seen in its careful (and to most, slow) development.

If one, however, wishes to view an artistic film (and has the patience and culture to do so), I would highly recommend It Happened Here. I applaud Brownlow and Mollo for their vision and for their talent in presenting sensitive and critical issues in a such an appropriate manner.

Spoiled by the ending

[matthew.hayes · 8/10 · 30 November 2000]

It Happened Here starts off stunningly, perfectly recreating a newsreel/fly on the wall documentary style with convincing recreations of German occupation and naturalistic acting.

Warning, possible spoiler

As the plot develops, however, it introduces a "need to use fascist methods to overcome fascism" theme that is clumsily handled until, in the unconvincing ending, the anti-Nazi partisans are made out to be every bit as loathsome as their enemies. An oh so typically 60s cynical twist that arguably insults the real wartime resistance groups in Europe.