Fascism on Film Podcast

Eddington: Fear is a Fertile Ground

In this episode, James and Teal tackle Ari Aster’s "Eddington," a dark, surprising film set in the earliest days of COVID—when fear, isolation, and conspiracy thinking were reshaping the country in real time. They discuss Joaquin Phoenix’s unraveling sheriff, the town’s descent into misinformation, and the chaotic final act that blurs the line between protest and false-flag operation. It’s one of Aster’s most unsettling films, and a direct reflection on the world we’re living in now.

'One Battle After Another': Which America do you live in?

Paul Thomas Anderson's "One Battle After Another" is both a thrilling action film, and a mirror-holding look at current American society. Baked into its absurdist right vs. leftist fantasy are truths about how each side views the other. Anderson doesn't let anyone off the hook, as he finds the humor in taking each side to a comical extreme. 
Make no mistake, through the humor of "One Battle After Another," it's clear who the villains are, and who pulls the strings. As we see our country move closer and closer to one ruled by a small number of wealthy white elites, some of the craziness that unfolds in this movie doesn't feel quite so far-fetched. 
Although filmed prior to the current administration, Anderson clearly knew where the country was headed, and he becomes one of the first filmmakers to tackle our current political situation head-on. 
This week we examine the first of two modern U.S. filmmaker takes on America today. We'll break down the other in our next episode.

'Hans Westmar': The Fascist Martyr

Released just months after Hitler came to power, "Hans Westmar" stands as one of the earliest cinematic expressions of Nazi ideology. Ostensibly a biopic of Horst Wessel—the Sturmabteilung (SA) activist turned martyr whose death became a rallying cry for the Nazi movement—the film dramatizes the transformation of a young man from aimless nationalist to disciplined Nazi believer. But more than a tale of political awakening, "Hans Westmar" is a ritualized myth of sacrifice: a cinematic hymn to obedience, struggle, and death in the service of the Volk. This episode dissects the film’s calculated use of martyrdom, racialized othering, and aestheticized violence to forge the ideal fascist subject. What does it mean to “die for Germany”? Who is seen as the enemy within? And how does the myth of redemptive bloodshed sustain fascist ideology on screen?

Reich Cinema: 'Hitler’s Hollywood'

Between 1933 and 1945, more than 1,000 feature films were produced under the Nazi regime—most of them not overtly propagandistic, but melodramas, musicals, comedies, and historical epics. Hitler’s Hollywood, a 2017 documentary by German critic Rüdiger Suchsland, explores this vast and often overlooked cinematic universe. Narrated by Udo Kier in haunted tones, the film argues that Nazi cinema was not just an arm of propaganda but a total fantasy system—an attempt to reprogram reality through spectacle, myth, and longing.
This episode goes beyond the documentary to ask: How does a fascist regime use film not just to control, but to enchant? How do escapist romances and sentimental dramas reinforce authoritarian ideals? And what happens when a culture begins to dream fascist dreams?

We’ll Always Have Fascism: ‘Casablanca’

Romance as Resistance: ‘Casablanca’
In this episode of Fascism on Film, we look at Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca (1942), one of Hollywood’s most enduring films and one of its quietest acts of persuasion. Beneath the romance and intrigue, Casablanca tells a story of political awakening—about a man, a city, and a country choosing between indifference and action against fascism.
We discuss how Humphrey Bogart’s Rick Blaine, with his famous line that he “sticks his neck out for nobody,” becomes a stand-in for prewar America. The film’s emotional arc mirrors the nation’s own shift—from cynicism and self-interest to moral conviction. By the time Rick helps Victor Laszlo escape and sacrifices his own happiness, his personal redemption becomes a metaphor for America joining the fight for democracy.
The film’s characters form a map of the moral landscape of World War II: Rick as the disillusioned American, Ilsa as a divided Europe, Laszlo as the conscience of the resistance, Renault as the opportunist, and Strasser as the face of authoritarian power. Casablanca’s brilliance lies in how emotion becomes politics—a love story turned into a lesson in courage.
Behind the camera, many of the film’s cast and crew were refugees from fascism—Conrad Veidt, Peter Lorre, Madeleine Lebeau, and Curtiz himself. Their real experiences give the movie its emotional truth; the fear and displacement onscreen were lived, not imagined.
We also explore the film’s mythmaking and legacy. From the Cross of Lorraine hidden in a smuggler’s ring to the swelling of “La Marseillaise” over “Die Wacht am Rhein,” Casablanca builds its resistance through symbols, songs, and small acts of defiance rather than overt politics.
80 years later, Casablanca still holds up a mirror to moments of moral hesitation and reminds us that neutrality is a choice, that romance can be resistance, and that even one person’s decision has meaning in a broken world.

Everyone Loves to Hate a Nazi: 'Inglourious Basterds'

This week, we take aim at Nazis as pop-culture film villains and the tropes associated with them in a discussion on Quentin Tarantino’s "Inglourious Basterds," in which the auteur shakes up World War II history with his revisionist caper war film. He makes an audience hungry for Nazi revenge, questioning how far one must go along in the journey to experience catharsis in foiling the Nazis. And in the ultimate act of revenge, Tarantino gives the masses something they always wanted to see, and Hitler gets his comeuppance. This film, shaped by a director with a history of fascist propaganda movies and WW2 films at his disposal, creates a Nazi-revenge, blood-soaked, brain-splattered pop culture sensation in a culture where sex gets you an NC-17 rating, and violence gets you Oscar nominations.

Before the Curtain Falls: 'The Last Metro'

François Truffaut’s "The Last Metro" is a deceptively quiet film about survival, resistance, and performance under Nazi occupation. Set in a Parisian theater during the German occupation of France, the story revolves around a company that tries to continue producing art while hiding the theater’s Jewish director in the basement. Beneath its surface—a war-era romance and backstage drama—is a nuanced meditation on repression, complicity, and cultural resistance.
The title refers not just to the curfew imposed by the occupying forces (forcing audiences and actors alike to catch “the last metro” home) but also to a kind of societal and moral deadline. Everyone must choose whether to act, to pretend, or to disappear.
"The Last Metro" is often read as a metaphor for how artists and intellectuals maneuvered under occupation, and how repression forces performance in every sphere of life. For Truffaut, born in 1932 and whose family had complex wartime allegiances, the film is also a personal reckoning with French memory—how heroism, compromise, and fear intermingle beneath the surface of everyday life.

An Empire of Crime: 'The Testament of Dr. Mabuse'

"The Testament of Dr. Mabuse" is Fritz Lang's 1933 German detective thriller that arrived on the heels of Hilter coming to power, making it the regime's first official 'banned' movie. 
The film is a fascinating look at how an evil ideology spreads beyond one man when that man make it his mission to make evil the rule of law. 
"Mabuse" is a semi-sequel to Lang's masterpiece, "M," and it packs a punch visually and through its innovative use of audio. 
Our discussion hits on its fascist interpretations, some of the misunderstandings about the movie, and the film's place in time when it was created under one set of rules, and ready for release under another.
 
 

The Mistake of Identity: 'Mr. Klein'

In this episode of the Fascism on Film Podcast, we look at Mr. Klein (1976), Joseph Losey’s haunting story of identity, complicity, and erasure in Nazi-occupied France.
Alain Delon plays Robert Klein, a Paris art dealer who lives comfortably off the desperation of others, buying paintings and possessions from Jewish families needing to flee persecution. He’s charming, detached, and perfectly suited to the opportunism of wartime Paris until the day a Jewish newspaper arrives in his mail, addressed to “Mr. Klein.”
Trying to prove he is not that Mr. Klein, he enters a maze of bureaucracy that slowly consumes him. What begins as a misunderstanding becomes an obsession and, finally, a collapse of identity.
Losey’s film moves between realism and dream. Mirrored rooms double Klein’s reflection, a grotesque cabaret mocking Jewish caricatures, and the quiet efficiency of the French police preparing for the 1942 Vel’ d’Hiv roundup. Beneath the surface elegance lies what we call the “machinery of murder” a portrait of fascism carried out through paperwork, compliance, and silence.
We discuss how Mr. Klein reveals fascism not as spectacle but as routine, and how easily a society can lose its moral center when categorizing people for persecution becomes routine bureaucracy.
Watching it today, the parallels are chilling. Join us as we unpack Mr. Klein, a story that asks what happens when the system decides who you are and how easily anyone can disappear inside it.

Finding the Courage: 'This Land is Mine'

We open our second season of "Fascism on Film" with Jean Renoir’s wartime drama "This Land is Mine." This  film boldly dramatizes the internal resistance to fascism—not on the battlefield, but in the classroom, the courtroom, and the soul. 
Released in 1943 while the war was still raging, "This Land is Mine" explores what it means to live under occupation, and what it takes to speak the truth in a world governed by fear. Set in a fictional European town under Nazi rule, the film centers on a timid schoolteacher, Albert Lory (played by Charles Laughton), who undergoes a moral awakening from passive compliance to active resistance.
Through this journey, Renoir offers a commentary on education, conscience, and the price of dissent. This episode looks at the film’s idealistic framing of national character and moral clarity, while also situating it within the political context of wartime Hollywood and Renoir’s own exile from Vichy France.