Yellow Caesar

*Yellow Caesar*
Yellow Caesar
Directed by	Alberto Cavalcanti
Written by	Adrian Brunel (dialogue); Frank Owen (uncredited) ; Michael Foot (uncredited)
Cinematography	John Taylor
Edited by	Charles Crichton
Music by	Walter Leigh
Production; company	Ealing Studios
Release date	1941;
Running time	24 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

Yellow Caesar is a 1941 propaganda film produced by Ealing Studios and Michael Balcon and directed by Alberto Cavalcanti. The screenwriters were Michael Foot, later leader of the Labour party, and Frank Owen credited under the pseudonym Michael Frank.^[1]

Synopsis

Yellow Caesar is billed as an "assessment" of the life and rise to power of the self-styled Il Duce, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Writing for the Screenonline website, Mark Duguid comments that the 24 minute short "is an unusually direct piece of agit-prop and probably the most striking of the 30-odd propaganda shorts released by Ealing Studios during WWII."^[1]^[2] The film traces Mussolini's years as a trade unionist thug and his role as a fascist demagogue.^[3]

Reception

Whilst generally well received by British audiences, there were doubts about the film's reception in neutral Eire, where censors had previously refused to pass Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator.^[4]

Cast

Douglas Byng – English Sympathiser
Marcel King – Mussolini (voice)
Sam Lee – Mussolini (voice)
Lito Masconas – Radio Announcer
Max Spiro – Mussolini (voice)
Feliks Topolski – Cartoonist
Jack Warrock – Mussolini (voice)

References

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Duguid, Mark (2003–2014). "Yellow Caesar (1941)". BFI Screenonline. Retrieved 5 September 2020.
^ ”Musso shown in his true light”, Liverpool Evening Express, 22 March 1941
^ ”Around the Shows”, North Devon Journal-Herald, 20 March 1941
^ ”Mussolini”, Belfast Newsletter, 7 April 1941.