Propaganda Documentaries in France

Jean-Pierre Bertin-Maghit is professor of cinema studies at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle–Paris 3, where he is director of the Institut de recherche sur le cinéma et l’audiovisuel (IRCAV).Marcelline Block is a lecturer in history at Princeton University. She is the author of World Film Locations: Paris (2011), editor of Situating the Feminist Gaze and Spectatorship in Postwar Cinema (2010), and co-editor of French Cinema and the Great War: Remembrance and Representation (2016).

Bertin-Maghit provides a detailed analysis of the linkages between French and German propaganda during the Vichy years. Though the Nazis and the French collaborationist government had some common goals—for example, the vilification of the British and virulent anti-Semitism—they also diverged on a number of points, in particular the future of France. To focus on these points of convergence and divergence, Bertin-Maghit scrutinizes the mechanisms and content of Vichy documentary filmmaking. Vichy propagandists considered the documentary format as the most effective for influencing public opinion, an attitude that was in line with Nazi propaganda. Indeed, Vichy propagandists often mined Nazi documentaries for actuality footage. Vichy propagandists, however, wanted their documentary films to promote Marshal Petain and encourage what they called a national regeneration rather than Nazi themes of European hegemony. Despite their outward assertions of independence, Vichy propagandists, and their films, were subordinate to German policy and ultimately a failure…. [T]he book is a valuable resource for students of wartime propaganda…. For research libraries.Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.