Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
Prelude to War was the first film of Frank Capra's Why We Fight propaganda film series, commissioned by the Pentagon and George C. Marshall. It was made to convince American troops of the necessity of combating the Axis Powers during World War II. This film examines the differences between democratic and fascist states.
Prelude to War is a landmark piece of wartime propaganda filmmaking, commissioned at the highest levels of US military and government. Its novelty is genuine: Frank Capra's synthesis of newsreel footage, animation, narration, and dramatic reconstruction into a coherent ideological argument was a template-setting achievement for documentary war films. The cinematography is a patchwork of archival and staged footage, competent but uneven. There is no traditional acting to speak of — the narration is authoritative but the 'acting' category barely applies, rating low accordingly. The plot/argument is clear and effectively structured as a dialectic between democracy and fascism, though it is straightforwardly propagandistic. The ending is rousing but predictable for the genre.