Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Tymon Sutton The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Bubba N/A Look: This film IS propaganda, but it certainly isn't Soviet propaganda. I think it is clear from watching the film disinterestedly and/or reading ALL of the transcripts of Ayn Rand's HUAC testimony that it was American wartime propaganda aiming at 1) strengthening political ties with its then-ally Soviets, and 2) convincing the American's that they should support the joint effort with the Russians against Germany. The US was too afraid to admit to the American people that they, like, Churchill said, had to work with the devil to defeat Hitler; they used propaganda film instead (ad not just here, but overtly as part of Frank Capra's "Why We Fight" series). Further, I think it is probable, as a previous poster mentioned, that they are only guilty of writing a very ill-conceived "love knows no bounds" kind of war time love story; this is just a year or so after Casablanca, after all! The movie certainly was picked up, partly on the basis of the love-knows-no-bounds angle, but more overtly b/c, as the awful Robert Taylor pointed out in his own HUAC testimony, the request came from the US State department.

foosi-1 This film is utter, complete propaganda for Communism and the Soviet Union. Endless smiles, a happy, unified, prosperous people - not a single labor camp or knock on the door at night. Imagine a movie made of nothing but smiling, happy Germans under Hitler - with a team of Nazis as writers - who cleared the script with the German Embassy. Would people not call that a horrifying piece of evil? That's exactly what this film is, and it was rightly skewered when pre-McCarthy HUAC hearings were held on Communist influence in Hollywood. A perversely fascinating document of Hollywood's love affair with the Communist slave state.

gvfj I own this film on DVD, having bought it from a private collector a while back. I like it, not for its plot, musical score or cinematography, but for the simple reason that it was a brash attempt by the government of the day to encourage Americans to sacrifice themselves to save a regime that represented the secret wishes of an elite circle of Washington insiders. I was stimulated to search for a copy after reading Ayn Rand's 1947 testimony before the HUAC committee on-line. Long interested in this pivotal period of world history, I had previously acquired the German newsreels for the latter part of 1941 (i.e. Operation Barbarossa). German army cameramen had recorded a great deal of the conditions in the cities such as Kiev, Minsk, Smolensk, Nikolayev, and dozens of rural villages in the Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Their impossible-to-stage pictures showed first-world, European people, in the middle of the twentieth century, living in a degree of abject poverty, squalor, and despair which Americans would not believe without seeing. It rivaled the worst of the third world. Humans intentionally treated as expendable beasts of burden by their Bolshevik oppressors.So for Hollywood to produce such a glaring lie (not to mention distortion of the chronology of events) as "Song of Russia" in order to persuade people to support, or even risk life to participate in, a war to save such a regime is practically an act of enmity against its own people, in my opinion. It's easy to see why the Hollywood crowd is trying to make this movie disappear down an Orwellian memory hole. Highly recommended for anyone who doubts that Hollywood is anti-American.

Sylvia Stoddard Thanks to TCM for airing this astounding propaganda film in October 2003. Others have commented on the nearly unbearable Soviet propaganda in the film, but I watched the Stalin-supplied footage with awe as I had never seen most of it before, at least in this quality and quantity. The story is stock melodrama with the morals that we (America) must support our Russian allies at all costs and that the scorched earth policy is major war strategy.But through it all is the luminous face of Susan Peters, who was tragically paralyzed two years after this film's release and died in 1952. She is charming, delightful and disarming enough to inspire a whole village as well as the American conductor (Robert Taylor) who falls in love with her. They marry in an unlikely semi-religious ceremony.The notions that 1.)An American would be invited on a 40-city tour of Russia in early 1941, and 2.)That he would be able to take his Russian bride out of the Soviet Union (after the German invasion!) "for the greater good of Mother Russia," are pure fantasy. The huge symphony orchestras and the vast, aristocratic, jewel-bedecked audiences we see at theatre after theatre are laughably anti-communist, and the men would most likely have been conscripted by that time.Yet, as films reflect the history of our lives, I found this a fascinating chapter of the very brief period of US/USSR alliance. I'd love to see it again.