Mass culture, acontrivance of those that share the power and wealth, imposes itsproducts through advertisement and propaganda by exerting control overpeople’s consciousnessand crowding out folk art which might contravenewith the status quo
Cinema, like any other form of arts has been utilized as a means to spreading the propaganda of political regimes. This practice has been wholly exploited in cinema, due to the sheer communicative penetration of this technical mean, coupled with the power stemming from the combination of moving picture and the attendant sound which can influence and direct public opinion.
Historical examples of the effort to control the cinema can be found in America during the McCarthy era when censorship andprosecution of dissident cinema artists blocked anysubversive ideasout of film production. More examples can be found in third Reich’s Germanywhen ministry of propaganda under direct control of Goebbels, had to exclusive controlover cinema production,as well as in the soviet union wherefrom the era of Stalin’spowerstabilization onwards, thecinema was called to serve the soviet state bypromoting the model of the sovietperson, according to the styleof socialist realism.
In the case of October revolution of 1917 the use of cinema as a means of propaganda aimed not to manipulate the people but to awaken them. The policyimplementedbytheBolshevikshelpedtheevolutionofartsbyestablishing a general and specific framework as well as and creating, institutions that supported the potential innovatory artists.
The ideologies of Nazism and communism cross paths in a documentary of great importance created in 1965 by Mikhail Romm, a great soviet cinematographer, who loyal to the values of socialist realism, analyses and unfolds the thread of Fascism by using, among others, the original footage from the archives of the nazi ministry of propaganda.