| Yellow Caesar | |
| Director: | Alberto Cavalcanti |
| Music: | Walter Leigh |
| Cinematography: | John Taylor |
| Editing: | Charles Crichton |
| Production Companies: | Ealing Studios |
| Runtime: | 24 minutes |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Language: | English |
Yellow Caesar is a 1941 propaganda film produced by Ealing Studios and Michael Balcon and directed by Alberto Cavalcanti. The screenwriters were Michael Foot, later leader of the Labour party, and Frank Owen credited under the pseudonym Michael Frank.[1]
Yellow Caesar is billed as an "assessment" of the life and rise to power of the self-styled Il Duce, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Writing for the Screenonline website, Mark Duguid comments that the 24 minute short "is an unusually direct piece of agit-prop and probably the most striking of the 30-odd propaganda shorts released by Ealing Studios during WWII."[2] The film traces Mussolini's years as a trade unionist thug and his role as a fascist demagogue.[3]
Whilst generally well received by British audiences, there were doubts about the film's reception in neutral Eire, where censors had previously refused to pass Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator.[4]