Built from 1928 newsreels—the year 60 nations vowed to outlaw war—Storck’s razor-edged montage mocks the era’s self-congratulation by cross-cutting speeches and parades with portents of renewed violence: nationalism, colonial repression, police brutality. Slow-motion collapsing chimneys and the exhumation of an “unknown soldier” give the satire its sting.
Benito Mussolini
Himself (archive footage)
Philippe Pétain
Himself (archive footage)
Czar Nicholas II of Russia
Himself (archive footage)
