A Night at the Garden (2017) User Reviews

About as scary as the ones in Germany

[Horst_In_Translation · 6/10 · 31 January 2019]

"A Night at the Garden" sounds like a pretty harmless title, but the contents really aren't. This really short 7-minute documentary is about an American Nazi rally taking place at the Madison Square Garden back in 1939, so exactly 80 years ago now. So it is in black-and-white and still a sound movie. We see the people visiting the event, we hear the speaker and we see a demonstrator trying to climb the stage before he is taken away by security. That's all there is basically, but still I found it an interesting little movie. There is little talk about National Socialism outside Germany back then, outside Europe you could say. But such a movement existed in the United States as well and here we have a pretty captivating piece of evidence. This little movie also managed to get an Oscar nomination, which surprised me a bit because it really just consists 100% of archive footage, but I don't mind it. It is for example 10 times as good as the contrived other nominee (perhaps frontrunner) Black Sheep I have seen. Now back to this one here: third Oscar nomination for Marshall Curry this is, probably highly unlikely he wins this time, but I wouldn't mind. I think this was a good watch and there's many worse ways to sepdn 7 minutes on. Go see it, especially if you have an interest in 20th century political history.

A bit more of context?

[rmgaspar-49er · 6/10 · 10 February 2019]

I suppose the material is very rich and the importance so obvious as pointed in all reviews, but I wonder if this (or another piece) could have contextualized the footage and the event a bit more. Who organized it? How did they get 20,000 there, were there invitees or "tickets"? I would be most interested to know more about the attendance, and certainly the person who jumped the stage.

Interesting

[nicolaslusros · 7/10 · 12 February 2019]

It's very sad to know that this happened in the Madison Square Garden 80 years ago

A Frightening Look into the Abyss

[unclesamsavage · 7/10 · 2 March 2019]

Marshall Curry's A Night at the Garden is a shocking look at fascist nationalists uniting under hateful premonitions. Though the footage is all straight from the archives, I thought its raw telling of this rally was all the more sobering than it could have been even with more context. This is a trend in this year's Oscar nominees for documentary short. I was sincerely disturbed by the final text that comes on the screen. It really makes you think about where we stand today in American politics and how we may be losing sight of the bigger international picture and injustices. We must keep our wits about us, ladies and gentlemen.

Feels like a terrible alternate reality

[MrsMakrel · 6/10 · 26 February 2024]

It's terrifying. A Nazi rally was held in NYC before the outbreak of WWII, and this film shows some archival footage from that rally.

There are obvious parallels to modern political rallies, but I was more terrified at the fact that as a nation, there was anyone dancing publicly with the Nazi idea so proudly. I had no idea that this occurred so brazenly in our history, and to this level of scale.

Films like this are uncomfortable to watch, and I do feel like this was a targeted glimpse to look at only pieces that paralleled the modern rally. I want to see more context here and understand what led to this, and if there was any noticeable outcome.

Scary as hell....

[Steve-257 · 10/10 · 1 February 2019]

A great and elegant reminder how close we are to fascism in our own times.

Short, Superficial and Disappointing

[tarmcgator · 2/10 · 21 February 2019]

I was expecting an in-depth examination of the German-American Bund's activities in the 1930s. Instead we get the well-known footage of the Bund's Madison Square Garden rally on Feb. 20, 1939, used time and again in numerous earlier documentaries to demonstrate the influence of native fascists in America's past, or the threat of native fascism to America's present. The film images may shock, but they are nonetheless only pictures. There may have been "20,000" people at the rally, but there's no indication that all were "Nazis" or even sympathetic to the Bund. Some were anti-Nazi protesters, like the man shown rushing the stage and being hauled off by the NYPD before the Bund's goons can further rough him up. The rally was the well-publicized high point for the Bund, a relatively tiny organization (3,000 -- 5,000 hardcore members nationwide, mostly recent German immigrants) that had little influence on U.S. society and politics during its brief existence (1933-41). It's resemblance to U.S. neo-Nazis of the 21st century is superficial at best. The modern right wing in the United States is much more deeply seated in American culture, and its real leaders are not so stupid as to advertise their intentions and goals by waving swastikas and shouting "Sieg Heil!" Those looking for information on the Bund are best served by books by Bradley W. Hart ("Hitler's American Friends") or, if you can find it, Sander Diamond's "The Nazi Movement in the United States, 1924-1941". "A Night in the Garden" is just barely history and serves only to excite and alarm, rather than to comprehend and explain.

evil has its simple ways

[lee_eisenberg · 10/10 · 16 May 2020]

The Oscar-nominated documentary "A Night at the Garden" shows scenes from a Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden in 1939. As expected, the speakers spout lots of anti-Jewish and anti-labor pronouncements. It just goes to show how evil can be something so simple (Hannah Arendt called it the banality of evil). And then in 2017, neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, egged on by a certain orange-skinned head of state. As Mark Twain said, history doesn't always repeat but sometimes it rhymes.

Excellent documentary. The producer is Laura Poitras, who notably filmed Glenn Greenwald's interview with Edward Snowden, turning it into the Oscar-winning documentary "Citizenfour".

"MISLEADING"

[harsh-chauhan · 5/10 · 25 February 2019]

A clip without Context. Those who attended didn't knew about the future. 5/10 because of a Rare Footage.

A shocking but must-be-realized history moment

[l-05259 · 10/10 · 18 March 2019]

No one has known that it did happen in America in 1939, just a few months before the war of great evil. But everyone has to face it now because it is the TRUTH. In this very time, this very moment, a night at the garden is a must see for EVERYONE.

A Warning for Our Time

[charissa_rn · 10/10 · 2 March 2019]

February 20, 2019 is the 80th anniversary of the a "Pro-American": rally at Madison Square Garden. Marshall Curry's A Night in the Garden gives us a glimpse of that night. The sounds and images of the night are far too similar to current political rallies to not give pause, if not alarm. I had no idea such an event had ever occurred in the United States. Most likely, many other Americans do not know about the German-American Bund.

In an "On the Media" interview with Brook Gladstone, Curry said he used a Cinéma verité style to give viewers a sense of being there, to spark curiosity. He succeeded. Curry never intended this to be an exhaustive documentary on the German-American Bund. He kept it short, so it could be posted on social media and more people would watch it. It is telling that Marianne Gambellis, president of ad sales at Fox news, refused to run a 30-second advertisement for this movie during Sean Hannity's show. As reported in Newsweek (2/19/19), she rejected the ad because it contained "disgraceful Nazi imagery regardless of the film's message and did not meet our guidelines." Ironic in that Fox news has aired other advertisements with Nazi imagery. Curry's film, "A Night in the Garden" is a must see for everyone.