Monday, June 22, 2015

Roland Clark's "Holy Legionary Youth," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Holy Legionary Youth: Fascist Activism in Interwar Romania by Roland Clark.

The entry begins:
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu would have loved the idea of having a movie made about him. As the leader of a fascist movement named the Legion of the Archangel Michael, he filmed his own wedding in 1925 and arranged to have it broadcast in Bucharest before the censors confiscated it and destroyed the film. Incredibly proud, Codreanu was so tall and good looking that people referred to him as the “Hollywood Hitler.” He would have liked someone like Hugh Jackman or Scott Caan to portray him confronting crowds of angry workers, plotting to assassinate a series of public figures, or shooting a police chief on the steps of the courthouse. His followers talked about him in messianic terms and he even convinced them to build a holiday resort on the Black Sea entirely with donated goods and volunteer labor. Playing Codreanu wouldn’t be difficult, because he...[read on]
Learn more about Holy Legionary Youth at the Cornell University Press website.

My Book, The Movie: Holy Legionary Youth.

--Marshal Zeringue