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The Berlinale, the Berlin film festival, ran the film series “Selling Democracy” for the last time this year.

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This year under the title of “Friendly Persuasion” the series centered on feature films, comedies and satires concerning the “Americanization” of Europe. 

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The Berlinale itself was born under the Marshall Plan, which was set up by the in 1948 to aid a war-torn Europe and help it get back on its feet. Not only did that include economic aid worth billions of dollars but also the backing of films that were made to promote the idea of democracy and the American way of life to contrast the rising threat of communism.

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The Berlinale was meant to help Berline merge with the rest of the world. The last three years it has shown the Marshall Plan films throughout all of Europe under the title of “Selling Democracy.” Although they did include some anti-Marshall Plan films that had been produced by the former East Germans.

David Ellwood, British historian and Marshall Plan expert says this: 

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“Americans wanted to get over the language barriers in Europe , so they made films everybody could understand. That included cartoon films, comedies and satires.” 

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“The first priority was to make material that could be shown in all 16 Marshall-Plan-Countries. At the time you also had a lot of countries where illiteracy was high – it was 15 percent in Italy and also very high in Portugal or Greece. So the US wanted to have films that could be shown on every educational level, you didn't had to be clever to watch them.”

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“And it was a time, when everybody went to the cinema once or twice a week, it was the dominant mass medium. Film played the role that TV plays today. So the Marshall Plan, which was the biggest propaganda operation ever seen in peacetime, had a great psychological dimension. There was a sense, that the medium was the message. The urgency and the commitment and the energy the Americans brought to this whole operation has something to tell us today.” 

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All in all it has been quite an amazing story and learning experience to understand what all of this meant at the time. It does show the power that the movie medium has when attempting to get a message across. Also it reveals how it can be used, for better or worse, in showing forth a message that goes beyond words into visual communication that goes beyond the spoken tongue, to speak in a universal language.

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It was similar to the genius used by Mel Gibson when he chose to have the ancient languages use so that it could be interpreted into any language of the world.