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The Bootleg Files: Here is Germany

BOOTLEG FILES 836: “Here is Germany” (1945 propaganda film directed by Frank Capra).

LAST SEEN: On YouTube and other online sites.

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: On public domain labels.

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: No copyright was ever filed on the film.

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Nope, it is doomed to public domain hell.

During World War II, the U.S. government churned out scores of nonfiction films aimed at both the enlisted military personnel and civilian audiences. Many highly regarded Hollywood filmmakers received commissions from the military and worked to create productions that would artistically drive the message about why the nation was at war and what it hoped to achieve.
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Cluny Brown (1946)

Ernst Lubitsch’s last completed film was a riff on the British class system in the period before World War II. The estate of Sir Henry Carmel is turned upside down by two outsiders: Adam Belinski (Charles Boyer), a Czechoslovakian writer forced from his country by the Nazis, and Cluny Brown (Jennifer Jones), the orphaned niece of a Cockney plumber who is hired as the new maid but who secrets desires to pursue her uncle’s profession.
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