Victory Through Air Power

I have to pay closer attention to my list. I watched the 1943 hybrid Victory Through Air Power when Bambi and Saludos Amigos were before it. Oh well.

Based on the book “Victory through Air Power,” the hybrid film of the same name starred its author, Alexander de Seversky and was nominated for Best Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.

The film starts with a tongue-in-cheek animated history of aviation and aerial warfare before segueing into demonstrations of how Ally aviation can and will wipe out the Axis with live action interjections of de Seversky explaining how aerial combat is one of the biggest factors in winning the war.

That’s it.

I’ve seen my share of propaganda films. Mrs. Miniver and All Quiet on the Western Front gave honest perspectives of war from the home front and the front lines. They were so effective that I didn’t feel right giving them ratings.  Casablanca was an entertaining film that still had a theme of standing up and doing what’s right. Warner Bros. had quite a few shorts with a propagandist slant. And most of them were hysterical. Bug Bunny Nips the Nips had Bugs defeating the entire Japanese Army and Daffy the Commando featured Daffy hitting Hitler over the head with a mallet. Propaganda in the midst of war doesn’t have to be dry. But after the history of aviation slips into the propaganda aspect in this film, the film just becomes painful to watch. It might be because it’s so direct with its explanations of how the air force will annihilate the Luftwaffe and Japanese Air Force and I’m so removed from the time and demographic that it’s just plain uninteresting. Which is odd, because I find the Donald Duck short Der Fuhrer’s Face enjoyable.

Final Call: Propaganda doesn’t have to be mind-numbingly uninteresting. But this was, which makes it dead last, crossing the Edge of Dissatisfaction. If it had actually been interesting, it would have made it into the Exceptions category for being so blatant.