The Mad Dog of Europe or how Nazism infiltrated Hollywood… the dark side of Hollywood. In 1932, Herman J. Mankiewicz, who would find fame a year later with his screenplay for Citizen Kane, wrote The Mad Dog of Europe: a visionary script denouncing the threat of Hitler. Between diplomatic pressure and economic interests, the Hollywood studios preferred to keep quiet and bury the project. Contrary to the idea that the Nazi menace would only be understood with the benefit of hindsight, some observers – journalists, intellectuals, artists – perceived the danger early on; this film pays homage to them. The story of this film that never got made seems to resonate today with the increasingly menacing divisions of our time, when inaction has become a political act. Through this story, the film questions political, moral and artistic responsibility in the face of the rise of racism, and shows how silence, circumspection or economic interest can work to inhibit the growth of awareness, and through it, perhaps, crystallised in a word, revolt. Beyond the specific fate of this aborted film, the documentary, which brings together archives and testimonies, (Nick Davies, Ben Mankiewicz, Sydney Stern, Thomas Doherty), paints a conflicted picture of Hollywood and revisits the wave of antisemitism in America, including in the very heart of Hollywood.

Bruno Deloye