Massacre in Rome (1973)

1973's Massacre in Rome is a surprisingly artful Euro co-production concerning the Ardeatine Caves massacre in 1944. The film calls to mind a later, more acclaimed film concerning a list. Except, in this instance, the list means death, not life.

 As a reprisal for the murder of 33 German soldiers by partisans in Rome, Hitler orders the execution of 330 Italians. The orders are carried out, though they prove to be a logistical nightmare. Much of the film consists of the routine compiling of this list of names; the interminable squabbling between jurisdictions; the swapping of responsibilities between ranks; and the eventual swelling of the names from the rolls of the usual suspects - petty criminals, communists and Jews. And then locating a site of execution which would also serve as a burial ground. All of this takes place in the beautiful and elegant surrounds of high art and architecture, and director George Pan Cosmatos misses no opportunity to provide brutal contrasts between human frailty and human potential. Much of the film's visual palette is an attempt to capture these contrasts, and at times it is spectacularly successful, particularly during the ambush sequence in Via Rasella.

 At the centre of it all is a splendidly robotic performance by Richard Burton as Kappler, the SS Officer with responsibility for the executions, whose self-pity degenerates into a self-serving fatalism that he wears as a badge of duty. It is a sympathetic portrait swathed in diction and middle-distance, and one of Burton's finer moments. It should be noted that this portrayal of Kappler departs from the historical truth - he was in fact an ardent and zealous Nazi. Leo McKern plays his hot-headed superior, happy to delegate the dirty jobs, but less interested in their details. His ravaged one-eyed face is perfectly evasive in this instance, happy to see and not to see as it suits. Marcello Mastroianni handles the difficult role of Father Antonelli with some sympathy; he is less successful appealing to Kappler's conscience than he is organising his frocks around Vatican indifference. In the end it is the German appeal to self-interest, with the Americans at the gates of Rome, that has more sway in determining the list.

Where Massacre in Rome falters is in its production values, which are those common to Euro co-productions during the 70s (dubbed minor parts), and in a fairly blunt script which introduces an unnecessary melodramatic twist to the end-proceedings. Still, it is full of memorable scenes, perhaps the most striking of which is Kappler instructing his officers on the task of close-range execution by picking out a junior by way of demonstration. If Massacre in Rome is remembered at all today it is perhaps that of an understudy to Schindler's List; but it tells a darker truth - that most lists mean death, not life.

A State of Denmark: by Robin Cook

In this camp, not one man has gone mad yet, at least not since I arrived, hanged himself or attacked a guard. I think it is because everyone has been robbed of his tenses, as I certainly have. Or, to be accurate, robbed of two tenses; the present and the future. The present here never changes and so has become what amounts  to a historic present: in other words, part of the past. And there is no future. I have heard of no-one even being interrogated yet, let alone standing trial. I have questioned the guards: yes, interrogations are on the point of starting. Next week, next month. But they never do.

Richard Watts is a once eminent English journalist living in exile on a small working vineyard in northern Italy. His crime had been to interview on television and make rather a fool of a leading left-wing politician, Jobling, on the eve of the election in which Jobling won power in Britain. Richard subsequently travels to America on business and prudently decides it would be unwise to return to England until the nature of the new regime makes itself known - there are already rumours circulating of mass-arrests, and even of executions. Using his American savings and investments, he buys the vineyard in Italy and settles there with his partner, Magda, to wait it out.

As time passes, the news from England is scarce and not at all good - Scotland and Wales have seceded, a fact that shocks Richard but does not appear to unduly concern anyone else. In fact, the Scots and Welsh governments have sealed and mined their borders to prevent English refugees from entering - later Richard discovers the English often clear these minefields by marching political prisoners through them. Elections have been ended and the class system has been replaced by a card system which exactly replicates a class system, except that it now permits a form of social mobility to a whole new swathe of bureaucrats and officials who are on the right side of the new regime. Non-whites are deported en masse. The few English visitors who come Richard's way are unwilling to discuss what is happening to England; it is obvious that they are frightened and unsure just how far the regime's arm is apt to reach. But their reticence is also a show of loyalty - they parrot phrases about sacrifice and national interest, as though they have persuaded themselves of the value of a murderous interim: (Janet: "They should all be locked up or drafted into labour gangs! We've got to have law and order! Students who won't conform have got to be bounced and cut right down till they do what they're told..."). Whatever actual information Richard can glean from this hysteria betrays a country in terminal decline, sliding into the usual totalitarian muck.

Richard is summoned to the local police station where he is warned, in friendly terms, that there have been inquiries about him from London, as well as some talk of extradition. The English government, having cleaned up at home, has decided to undertake housekeeping abroad. He is advised to take up Italian citizenship, and is admonished for not having done so already. The paperwork is duly despatched but it is much too late - several weeks later an official from Her Majesty's Revenue arrives on the vineyard to inform Richard that his affairs are not in order and that he must return to England. This interview is conducted entirely at the point of a gun, and Richard later bitterly regrets not shooting the official. For the vineyard is seized and deportation papers are served. With English diffidence, Richard decides too late to resist; on the boat, in fact, where he is beaten and tortured and his few remaining belongings thrown into the sea. He is separated from Magda upon arrival in England - he never sees her again - and is transported by train to a concentration camp in north-east England. And here Richard plays out the rest of his short life in some bewilderment - there is no confrontation with Jobling, just occasional pleasant chats with a minor official. When a man begs to be interrogated, you know you have him where you need him to be. For a brief time he attempts to recreate his Italian idyll by growing vegetables on a patch in the camp; they grow surprisingly well. Then it's over.

A State of Denmark was written in the mid to late 60s and published in hardcover by Hutchinson in 1970 - there was a later 1973 imprint in paperback from Panther and a 1994 edition. If I have one gripe with the dystopian/totalitarian scenarios dreamed up by mid to late 20th century authors, it is that their imaginations are restricted to the procedurals of Nazism or Stalinism; the Stasi or the Gestapo; the concentration camp or the Gulag, etc. None of them appear to have imagined the horrors of an ideology such as neo-liberalism; they could not foresee a form of capital flow so lazy that it requires people to voluntarily immerse themselves without coercion - to the point of ruin and death. Still, all that aside, A State of Denmark is an artful book. The writing is excellent and captures the Italian idyll brilliantly; the conclusion is detained by dystopian cliches, but there is enough force of character to make it as poignant and chilling as necessary. And Richard is, in many ways, my favourite kind of Englishman; a kind of last gasp dissident.

Robin Cook is probably better known as Derek Raymond, author of the acclaimed Factory crime novels. He led a very interesting life, from 50s beatnik to Foreign Minister in a short-lived anarchist government in the late 60s. A State of Denmark appears to have been well-informed by his life, which was one searing turn of events after another.

After All, this is England: by Robert Muller

"The state must certainly look after the poor and the sick... but general state charity, as the Labourites understand it, not only weakens the national economy, but degrades the recipient. The entire system of state aid and assistance must be de-socialised, and stripped of waste and inefficiency."

I know the Tories in the Coalition won't quarrel with that! Looking around me, I felt that the whole country is beginning to warm to the Leader's strength and positive approach, especially the women, who also admire his faultless sense of showmanship... the man has something.

Originally published in 1965 under the title The Lost Diaries of Albert Smith, Robert Muller's disturbing story of the rise of fascism in the UK was reprinted by Penguin as After All, This is England in 1968. This appears to have been its only paperback imprint, and the book has faded from memory over the years, partly because it has remained out of print, and partly because those reading it in the 1960s, an era of entrenched social democracy in Britain, must have considered its contents far-fetched, if not perverse. Unlike Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, Muller's book does not offer us a recognisable future from which we can draw pertinent but distant warnings; instead it offers an uncomfortable take on a persistent present; that of constant dissatisfaction with the way things are; and a yearning for the way they could be... if only.

Albert Smith is not an impressive man. He manages a small hardware store which once belonged to his father but which has since been bought out by a chain - Smith was retained as manager only because it seemed proper to do such things in post-war Britain. His wife is active in amateur dramatics and he suspects her of affairs with her fellow thespians, whom he regards as typical of the malais affecting the country. He has a small daughter, on whom he dotes. His son is a leftist hippy, much to his horror (Smith is very much a Conservative); they do not get on, and Smith has suspicions about his son's sexuality; the reverse is also true. Smith has a little problem - he likes to spy on couples who make love in their cars at a local beauty spot. He visits a psychiatrist to deal with his voyeurism, who suggests he keep a daily diary - the book is made up of the five diaries of Smith, each punctuated by an important or a terrible event, and each with explanatory notes from a mysterious future 'editor'.

The first diary is fairly innocuous - it details Smith's unhappiness with his life, his marriage, with the Labour government, and it sets out his analysis of the decay which he feels has entered Britain and its people. He harks back to the Empire quite fondly, recalls how things were done differently and properly by another calibre of men. He favours strong leadership and discipline. Youth must be set to work; immigrants must be sent home; all lives should be subjugated to the higher calling of the nation. It does not occur to Smith that dealing with his small dissatisfactions in the way he wants would require radical departures from the freedoms that allow him to keep a dissident diary in the first place (one of his later diaries is indeed confiscated). Nothing typifies Smith's dissatisfaction as much as his outrage over a local street sign which reads Cosley, Drive and about which he writes repeatly to the council - the misplaced comma represents everything wrong with the country. The first diary also tells of the forming of a new right-wing political party led by an ex-Conservative (Crossmere) and an ex-soldier (Hearn) - the British Action Party, which Smith promptly joins.

The second diary details the fall of the Labour government and the election of a coalition, part Conservative, part BAP. It also details the beginnings of a terrorist campaign across the country, which sees the coalition roll back civil liberties in the name of security. Smith becomes active in the local branch of the BAP as secretary and is drawn into the persecution of local minorities, for which he arrested and sent for trial. The Party suspends his membership with a nod and a wink, intimating that they'll see him right when he is released. There is a break while Smith serves his sentence and the third diary picks up his life upon release. He is, largely, ruined. His wife has left him, his son has gone abroad where he has become a sex worker, he has lost his job - yet rather than look to his radicalisation for some clue as to how he has fallen so far so fast, Smith clings to the same notions of strength, discipline and leadership - there must be more of it, not less, and it must be imposed. He throws himself back into the Party. But the Party has changed too. It is no longer a meeting point for those who feel a vague sense of dissatisfaction with modern Britain - it is now a slickly oiled political machine with a hierarchy of activists and a covert hand in the terrorism engulfing the country, something Smith, of course, refuses to believe, despite the mounting evidence. The third diary ends in absolute tragedy, as the coalition is dissolved and the BAP takes virtual control of country - in the ensuing street celebrations, Smith's four-year old daughter is killed by accident.

The fourth diary is a high-octane version of the third. Smith is drawn further into Party intrigue and adopts extreme positions to impress his ideological zeal on his superiors. He develops something of a martyr complex, having served time on behalf of the party, as he sees it; he approves of the ghettoes into which immigrants and minorities are now herded. He applauds when Hearn ousts Crossmere into exile and takes over the government, abolishing elections in the process. These are all sacrifices for the good of the country, and no-one has sacrificed more than Smith - his liberty, his employment, his daughter... when he receives an offer to attend a top-secret Party training course on the final solution to undesirables, he is delighted to accept. The fifth diary then picks up Smith after the six-month course - implacable, somewhat dehumanised, ready to do his duty, whatever it takes. An extermination camp is established on the beauty spot where Smith formerly spied on lovers and he is appointed camp administrator. Here he is witness to sights that do not seem to take him by surprise, despite their horror; it is not that he has been trained for it - it is that Smith's own pernicious view of human nature has reached its extreme end-point. He expected this, but he also expected it to be different, and he views all with severe dissatisfaction - the killing is chaotic and artibrary, not the orderly process Smith imagined - there is too much corruption and pettiness in the selection, as he finds for himself when he has a former employee of his, a young crippled girl, interned in the camp to act out his personal fantasies. He finds his Party colleagues to be too cruel, too corrupt, and altogether too zealous in their duties. He finds human fallibility at the camp to be every bit as infuriating as the moral failings of the young couples he once spied upon in the same place. In the words of the time - everything has changed and everything is the same. When the end comes for Smith he finds himself turning not to the Leader or the Party for strength, as he has all along, but instead turning to the crippled girl for comfort... meanwhile the comma between Cosley and Drive remains, sure as coastline.

Muller's narrative mirrors the progress of the country towards fascism through the events in Smith's life - the analogies are apt, if perhaps a little predictable; for example, Smith's young daughter dying on the eve of the Party ascending to power. The familiar political refrains of 'strong leadership' and 'law and order' and 'common sense' rattle through the text disturbingly. These simple-minded concepts are timeless political old-rope, and are always guaranteed to appeal to those who believe human nature can be changed through imposed discipline - in this case, a discipline rooted in tradition and self-reliance. Smith always 'knows better' when it comes to young people, immigrants and Union officials, just as he always 'knows his place' when it comes to Party members and the gentry. The fact that he can look both ways makes him a very desirable demographic for politicians who will campaign for his vanity and legislate for his prejudice. If Smith is to be believed, Britain expects... Britain expects a politician who is a strong leader, who will stand up for traditional values, who will cherish her imperial past, who will revive the Commonwealth, who will take us out of Europe, who will reform the welfare so it cannot be abused by scroungers and shirkers, who will reward those who want to work hard and get on, who will stem the tide of foreigners to our shores...

The book's problem is a too-close analogy to the rise of Nazism in Germany. Hearn is obviously Hitler; Crossmere is obviously Von Papen; the BAP with its banners and rallies is obviously the Nazi Party. At no point does Smith seek to draw a comparison between what is happening in Britain and what happened in Germany - it is a fatal weak spot because this is not an alternate history in which Nazism did not happen - Smith himself was something in stores during the Second World War, and a Party member of his acquaintance collects Nazi memorabilia. But even when Smith is arranging disposal of bodies at the camp, he seems curiously ignorant of historical context. There is only one possible explanation for this - the mysterious future editor who is presenting Smith's diaries for publication. This editor insists the diaries have not been redacted but, given his identity, or his origin, which is revealed at the end, we can only wonder if the historical context has been removed for political purposes.

Muller was an interesting writer, a German who settled in England after the war, and who doesn't really get the attention he deserves for the contribution he made to British cultural life; apart from this novel (and several others) he was very active on British television, penning several series, including Supernatural for the BBC in 1978, a rather splendid anthology of horror stories; and he made an outstanding contribution to the BBC's seminal science fiction series, Out of the Unknown, as well as ITV's Mystery and Imagination in the late 60s, writing blazing adaptations of Frankenstein and The Suicide Club, no less. It is a matter of regret that his name seems to have disappeared so mysteriously... to complete the sentence of the title: It couldn't possibly happen here; after all, this is England.