Cheap It Happened Here: The Story of Hitler's England (Video) (Kevin Brownlow, Andrew Mollo) Price

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

CATEGORY:	Video
DIRECTOR:	Kevin Brownlow, Andrew Mollo
THEATRICAL RELEASE DATE:	08 August, 1966
MANUFACTURER:	Tapeworm
MPAA RATING:	NR (Not Rated)
FEATURES:	Black & White, Special Edition, NTSC
TYPE:	Documentary
MEDIA:	VHS Tape
# OF MEDIA:	1
UPC:	784148006338