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Mexico's New Crisis, Youth Prepares

What should we make of Mexico's revolutionary new president? Plus, the importance of a good boy scout.

Anthology 1939 19 mins

Overview

True to its name, March of Time here conveys an especially clear idea of how rapidly the world was changing as a threatening new decade loomed. With Mexico's president Lazaro Cardenas nearing the end of his time in office, there's an evaluation of his 'socialist' policies - a onetime headache for Britain and America. Exotic-looking pictures help make those policies sound at best foreign, at worst outright alien.

While earlier editions of his cinemagazine had filled each reel with three or four stories, by 1939 Louis de Rochemont was beginning to scale back the variety in favour of more in-depth features. The threats posed to democratic thinking seem to have been one of his top concerns as a journalist. The companion item to the Cardenas report considers the role of literature in the forming of a youngster's mind, with idyllic scenes of boy scouts' activities prevailing over images of indoctrination from the likes of Hitler and Mussolini.

Original title

The March of Time 4th Year No. 12

Genres

Anthology

Country

USA

Language

English

Subjects

Scouts Semaphore Agriculture Education Mexico France Protest demonstrations Nazi Party Socialism United States of America

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Documentary 1938 16 mins

A genuinely historic film, which caused much controversy at the time: the first commercially -released American motion picture to explicitly attack Hitler and Nazism.

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Presidential Year Presidential Year

Documentary 1948 15 mins

‘Crisp and sincere’,‘carefully trained’ or ’resonant and vibrant’? Which voice would appeal to you if you had to pick the Republican candidate for the 1948 Presidential Election?

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Great Britain Coronation Great Britain Coronation

Anthology 1937 24 mins

Weatherproof bunting, fog, clockwork dolls and a Hollywood exodus to London: this sideways look at preparations for the Coronation of George VI provides a wry American take on a very British ceremony.

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Metropolis Metropolis

Documentary 1939 18 mins

This ode to New York from March of Time shows us how seven and half million people from every race and nationality in the world, live, work and play together in ‘the greatest metropolis of the New World’.