Despotism (1946)

★★★★★ · Cheesy Imagery -- Insightful Commentary · headlouse · 2003-04-15

As I watched this film, I alternated between laughing hysterically and staring in open-mouthed disbelief at the insight in the film. Strip the film of it's sensationalistic text/imagery and your left with a very insightful commentary about today's society. No matter what other reviewers say it is impossible to argue with the truth inherent in the basic tenets of this film: "As Wealth, Power, and the Media become more and more concentrated in to the hands of a few people then the rest of society becomes powerless" It is painfully obvious that this unbalanced concentration of power is happening…

★★★★★ · I enjoyed the film. · Framan · 2007-10-13

It amazes me that black and white film about political issues are instantly labeled as propaganda. I agree with many points of review by Bent Forkman. This film does far too much to encourage discourse to be classified as propaganda. Overall the quality of the film could be classed as watchable. There were parts that had significantly deteriorated and there was a minor high pitched whine through the whole episode. The track is a good example of why we need to archive our recordings. If you haven't watched this film then please do. You don't have to agree with everything to find it…

★★★★★ · Amazingly relevant · dynayellow · 2003-08-16

Hard to make fun of this film since 1) it's lessons are still relevant today and 2) it doesn't use cultural stereotypes to enforce its opinion. The film reminds us that it's not "pretty words" that make a democracy, but how it treats its citizen, and how power is distributed. Refreshing to see that when it uses actors to show how despotism can subtly begin to take hold, they use Caucasians speaking American English, in situations that are all too real.

★★★★★ · Proof of the first law of Communication · Titus Prime · 2011-01-25

First off. This film is not leftist nor is it conservative, or independent. It is a statement of social measurements. Based on our experiance as a nation seeking freedom from the topic. One we had escaped ourselves to create this nation. . Many of the people who are alive today to read this comment on this forum are alive because we as a people became involved. While I wont go into the sickening overly egotistical idea that we were some sort of selfless heroes of the world. It is still a fact that we did fight. We gave all and we destroyed a threat so powerful that its own people had become…

★★★★★ · Eerily relevant · SteveGus · 2004-03-08

It's interesting to compare this film with so many others from the collection. Yes, the sliding scales and binary logic of the film may be overly simplistic. The concentration of media power, its control by commercial interests, and the endless search for scapegoats seem eerily prescient in the twenty-first century. But other films in the collection show how it got that way: the demonizing of drugs and drug users, the scare stories about sex, the fear of young people themselves, the sense that even the mildest forms of deviance must be ruthlessly ferreted out and punished "for your own good"…

★★★★★ · these guys must have had a crystal ball · Abraxas · 2004-05-20

A very, VERY timely bit of film. Hardly dated. It could be remade today with exact same script. Just change the haircuts, clothing and use color film. The educators at the time had seen the horror of German fascism only a year before and knew how it came about. They also knew that "it could happen here too." EXCELLENT! This film should be shown in U.S. classrooms again, but since it is too close to the reality of the day, AND shows how the Pledge of Allegiance was originally done (without the mention of "God" added by the Joe McCarthy crowd a few years later), I doubt the current Bush regime…