Yellow Caesar

Yellow Caesar is a 1941 propaganda film produced by Ealing Studios and Michael Balcon and directed by Alberto Cavalcanti. The screenwriters were Michael Foot, later leader of the Labour party, and Frank Owen credited under the pseudonym Michael Frank.[1]

Yellow Caesar
Directed byAlberto Cavalcanti
Written byAdrian Brunel (dialogue)
Frank Owen (uncredited)
Michael Foot (uncredited)[1]
Music byWalter Leigh
CinematographyJohn Taylor
Edited byCharles Crichton
Production
companies
Release date
  • 1941 (1941)
Running time
24 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

Synopsis

Yellow Caesar is billed as an "assessment" of the life and rise to power of the self-styled Il Duce, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Writing for the Screenonline website, Mark Duguid comments that the 24 minute short "is an unusually direct piece of agit-prop and probably the most striking of the 30-odd propaganda shorts released by Ealing Studios during WWII."[1][2] The film traces Mussolini's years as a trade unionist thug and his role as a fascist demagogue.[3]

Reception

Whilst generally well received by British audiences, there were doubts about the film's reception in neutral Eire, where censors had previously refused to pass Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator.[4]

Cast
  • Douglas Byng – English Sympathiser
  • Marcel King – Mussolini (voice)
  • Sam Lee – Mussolini (voice)
  • Lito Masconas - Radio Announcer
  • Max Spiro - Mussolini (voice)
  • Feliks Topolski – Cartoonist
  • Jack Warrock - Mussolini (voice)

References
  1. Duguid, Mark (2003–2014). "Yellow Caesar (1941)". BFI Screenonline. Retrieved 5 September 2020.
  2. ”Musso shown in his true light”, Liverpool Evening Express, 22 March 1941
  3. ”Around the Shows”, North Devon Journal-Herald, 20 March 1941
  4. ”Mussolini”, Belfast Newsletter, 7 April 1941.


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