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It Happened Here (1965) More at IMDbPro »

It Happened Here: The Story of Hitler's England (vhs):

Amazon.com video review: British film historian and acclaimed documentarian Kevin Brownlow was only 18 when he teamed up with military history buff Andrew Mollo to make this eerie "what-if" take on WWII. A brief, newsreel-perfect documentary introduction explains that Germany invaded and occupied Britain in 1941. Now, as the war is heating up on the Russian front in 1944, Germany pulls out all but a skeletal force, and the resistance readies itself for an assault. The story is seen from the perspective of an apolitical nurse who all too easily falls under the sway of British Nazi party in an effort to "get Britain on her feet," and we follow her journey from willing collaborator to horrified participant. Brownlow and Mollo use grainy black-and-white footage and hand-held camerawork (courtesy of future David Cronenberg cinematographer Peter Suschitzky) to give a documentary-like reality to the picture, but it's the easy naturalism of German soldiers on London streets and Nazi flags hanging from public buildings that gives the film its unsettling undercurrent. The technique is often primitive and many of the actors show their inexperience with stiff, self-conscious performances, but there's a canny cinematic intelligence behind the camera and the cutting. Produced on a starvation budget over a period of seven years, this is a brave, understated independent production in a time when such cinematic experiments were all but unknown. Brownlow documented the experience in the memoir How It Happened Here. --Sean Axmaker

It Happened Here (dvd):

Amazon.com video review: British film historian Kevin Brownlow was all of 18 when he conceived the idea for this alternate-history film depicting what life in London would have been like if Nazi troops had conquered England in July 1940. Along with his friend and collaborator Andrew Mollo (only 16 at the time), he took eight years to piece the film together using borrowed equipment and begging scraps of film stock from established filmmakers such as Stanley Kubrick. The result owes much to Brownlow's penchant for silent films (he authored a classic text on the subject entitled The Parade's Gone By), and possibly to Italian neorealism, since the semidocumentary style bows in that direction. Good thing, too. The documentary feel captivates the viewer. The story follows an Everybrit named Pauline as she grows from complacence and resignation over the Nazi occupation of England to when she becomes a nurse for the Nazis and realizes the true horror of her and England's situation. Brownlow's pure desire for authenticity makes the film more chilling than it would otherwise have been. For instance, on the film's initial release, Jewish groups objected to a sequence involving a real-life fascist of the time, Colin Jordan, spouting his opinion of Jews and euthanasia. They feared people wouldn't pick up on the film's anti-Nazi stance, and would therefore take the comments seriously. So seven minutes of footage were cut that have now been restored, making the film scarier than ever. --Jim Gay