Any film where the commentary contains those words has got something wrong with it. Nevertheless and notwithstanding the often clunking commentary and a continual and continually irritating musical score, there's a lot that's interesting about Strange Victory. It's a warning about the future looking at children in a maternity ward, reminiscent of Diary for Timothy but much more didactic, much more determined and (alas) much more confidently marxist. It looks at the presence force and effect of racism in the USA, at segregation and Jim Crow, at quotas at universities, at "restricted~" communities, at lynchings. There's a fictionalised scenario in the middle where a black ex-pilot cannot get a job flying in the USA. The director was perceptive; he could see that things wouldn't be the same, unfortunately his solution- communism- failed and the USA could change and adapt. There might be new prejudices and new problems but they are different and and have different effects. All the same, worth having a look at for the driving force of the images, some effective rhetoric, some astonishing visual images and superb archive footage.
Review of Strange Victory
