Fulfilling his debt to civilization: American filmmaker Harold Marvin Shaw, British wartime propaganda, and the anti-Bolshevik The Land of Mystery, 1914–1920

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Land of Mystery (1920) was a melodrama movie based on a fictionalized life of Vladimir Lenin, made by the American filmmaker Harold Marvin Shaw. Shaw had previously made drama films with wartime propaganda content in Britain and South Africa. The Land of Mystery was financed by Russian exile Boris Said, and the story was written by Basil Thomson, Britain’s Director of Intelligence. It was partly filmed in a rush on location in war-torn Lithuania, as well as in a London studio. When it was exhibited, The Land of Mystery (1920) was described in The Bioscope trade journal as having ‘caused more discussion than any British film of the last five years’. However, no copy of the film survives. This article reconstructs the circumstances in which the film was made, and suggests that Shaw was compromised by the prejudices of Thomson and Said.