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Nazis lose again (and again) at the Somerville Theatre
It started with “The Blues Brothers.” A few years ago, Somerville Theatre Creative Director Ian Judge was flipping through channels and happened upon the crowd-pleasing sequence in director John Landis’ 1980 musical demolition derby when John Belushi’s Joliet Jake Blues and Dan Aykroyd’s Elwood Blues knock a bunch of neo-Nazis off a bridge. Inspired by the 1977 Supreme Court case National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, the scene spawned an oft-quoted Belushi catchphrase, “I hate Illinois Nazis,” and prompted Judge to put together one of the Somerville’s most popular repertory programs.
“There are few things more entertaining than watching a Nazi bastard get their just desserts on a big screen,” said Judge. The “F**k the Nazis” series is back this summer for another celebration of good triumphing over a purely evil ideology, running through June 10 with a collection of nine movies ranging from high adventure to heavy drama and even a few films for the whole family. It’s a return that Judge called “very sadly needed.”
Grammy-winner Kanye West’s new single “Heil Hitler” is currently racking up millions of streams on X, the social media outlet owned by our unelected co-president Elon Musk, who was seen throwing “Seig Heil” salutes for laughs on Inauguration Day before “joking” that his pronouns were “He/Himmler.” Judge lamented the recent resurgence of this “flaccid little ethos,” noting that, “even in Boston, you realize there’s still a bunch of braindead human turds who believe in that crap. It’s more prominent now than it has been in generations, coupled with a rise in antisemitism.”
This is why it was so gratifying when, earlier this month, more than 300 people filled the Somerville’s main auditorium on a Wednesday night to watch an eminent archeologist beat the stuffing out of some Nazi scoundrels before the wrath of God melted their faces off. Steven Spielberg’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark” is about as much fun as a movie can be, and also about as antifascist as movies get. (It’s always cracked me up that the bad archaeologist is a Frenchman collaborating with the Germans.) After suffering through too many Stephen Miller press conferences, there was something extra cathartic about all the cheering in the theater for Dr. Jones’ feats of derring-do.
I was sitting near some little kids who had never seen “Raiders” on a big screen, and certainly not on a screen like the Somerville’s. One of the youngsters had eyes the size of goldfish bowls when the movie was over, excitedly telling me he’d be back the next week for “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.” (That’s the one where Harrison Ford scowls, “Nazis, I hate these guys.”)
In addition to keeping up with the Joneses, this year’s lineup includes a rare 35mm screening of director Frank Borzage’s “The Mortal Storm” (May 28). The 1940 drama shows how Hitler’s rise to power tears apart a family living in a small Alpine village on the Austrian border, with the Wizard of Oz himself, Frank Morgan, as a “non-Aryan” professor being persecuted by the new regime. The movie so enraged Joseph Goebbels that he banned it and all MGM films from Germany, which is quite a recommendation. James Stewart co-stars, a year before he became the first major movie star to enlist and fight the Nazis in World War II.
This weekend’s screening of “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” (May 18) is a personal one for Judge. The 1971 Disney adventure stars Angela Lansbury as a kindly witch taking care of London children fleeing the Blitz. Together, they summon some animated pals to chase off a U-boat full of unwanted Nazi visitors. The Somervile native recalled first seeing it “with my grammar school class in the basement chapel at St. Clement's on those rare, special days where we would get to watch a movie. It’s a great example of that cultural commonwealth we used to all share, that everyone has to do their part to defeat these buffoons. Even this goofy witch from “Murder, She Wrote” will help send them on their way.
“To us kids, the message was cut and dried: These are the bad guys we are fighting,” he explained. “Somehow in the screwed up world in which we find ourselves, there are now a ghastly amount of people who seem to have lost sight of that fact. This narrative cannot be allowed to be blurred by modern day losers stoking the flames of antisemitism and fascism. These movies help us remember who we are at our best.”
The series continues over Memorial Day weekend with a special 35mm IB Technicolor presentation of the movie that was probably how most kids of my generation first learned about Nazis, “The Sound of Music” (May 25). I could be a jerk here and point out that the real Von Trapp family fled by train to Italy, and didn’t actually walk over the Alps while carrying their suitcases and musical instruments. But that’s just me being resentful that I grew up with two little sisters and had to sit through this thing over and over when I would have rather been watching “Raiders” again instead.
Or I would rather have been watching “The Great Escape” (May 25). John Sturges’ 1963 classic stars a never-cooler Steve McQueen as the most irreverent in a motley crew of Allied prisoners of war digging their way out of a Nazi prison camp. Co-starring James Garner, Charles Bronson and James Coburn, this rousing wartime adventure is a sterling example of old-fashioned Hollywood craftsmanship and manly, movie star charisma. It’s a movie seemingly designed in a lab to be seen on a Sunday afternoon with your dad.
Oliver Hirschbiegel’s grueling 2004 bunker drama “Downfall” (May 22) features a stunning performance by Bruno Ganz as der Führer and an infamous scene that has unfortunately been memed so far into oblivion that you’ll probably be able to tell who spends too much time on the internet by the whispering and elbow-nudges in the theater. It’s followed a couple of weeks later by the splattery 2023 revenge flick “Sisu” (June 3), in which some Nazis steal gold from the wrong Finnish prospector. Finally, a movie for everyone who complained that “Inglourious Basterds” wasn’t bloody enough.
Ending where it all began, the series closes out with “The Blues Brothers” (June 10). The “F**k the Nazis” screening of this film in 2023 was the most joyful experience I had at the movies that year. No matter how many times you may have seen “The Blues Brothers” — and I’ve seen it more times than you can count — nothing compares to seeing it on a giant screen, where the absurdly gargantuan scale of all the gratuitous destruction becomes the film’s funniest joke. More than a hundred stunt cars were wrecked in the making of this movie, including the neo-Nazis’ Ford Pinto that was dropped 1,200 feet from a helicopter.
“The Blues Brothers” was my favorite movie when I was a little kid, and was one of my nephew’s first favorites as well. It makes sense that little boys love it when you realize that the whole movie is bad words, great music and cars smashing into each other. But in keeping with the educational intentions of Judge’s programming, I believe there are some important lessons here that children can learn. The movie taught me, at an early age, about the foundations of American gospel and R&B, introducing this young music lover to the wonders of Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles and James Brown. It also taught me that it was cool and even kind of heroic to be openly contemptuous of cops, rednecks and especially Illinois Nazis.
“F**k the Nazis” runs at the Somerville Theatre through June 10.
