A Night at the Garden

Without the exterior shots of Madison Square Garden, viewers of Marshall Curry’s A Night at the Garden might think they’re watching a Hitler rally. But this is a chilling collation of archival film clips from the “Pro-American Rally” held in New York City on Feb. 20, 1939. Boys in brown shirts carry American flags through the crowd and onto the stage, taking their place beneath a 50-foot painting of George Washington flanked by deconstructed American flags and swastikas. The eerie music gives way to organizer Fritz Kuhn, a Hitler acolyte, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. “We’d like to think that when Nazism rose up, all Americans were instantly appalled,” Curry says. His film strips us of that comforting illusion.