Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Console best movie i've ever seen.

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

jmahon-48518 A great cast, good sets, accurate historical costumes and plausible plot. All this is mired by a needless pro-collective/communist depiction of Ukraine under Stalin's reign of terror (which culminated in over 5 million Ukrainians starving to death). This happy go lucky peasant life is equivalent to Hollywood's "Step n Fetch" depiction of African Americans during this same time period. True it is a war time propaganda film but the Hollywood socialist bias and blindness to Communist terror would result in the McArthism backlash of the 50s. Film historians have rightly attcked the abuses of McCarthism but never truly come to grips with Hollywood's failure to address the mass murders and reign of terror of Communism.

Art Vandelay I understand why it was made -- you gotta convince gullible farm boys in Iowa to get themselves shot in the head or lose a leg to a grenade or contract syphilis from a Paris h00ker. In reality the Hun were rank amateurs compared to the Soviet Empire when it came to making Ukrainians dead. I guarantee there were no happy villagers breaking up their dance routines to wage guerrilla warfare against the Germans. In the fight between Russia and Germany there were no good guys, but millions of innocent, dead civvies. This movie does serve a purpose, however. It reminds us that the government was right to be concerned about commies in the entertainment industry. Especially now that it has has been conclusively shown that Washington and Hollywood were rife with commie infiltrators. Frankly, I'm surprised everybody involved in this movie wasn't blacklisted. Or worse.

utgard14 Good cast turns in some of the weakest performances of their careers in this notoriously pro-Soviet propaganda film made at the height of World War II. Franklin Roosevelt urged Hollywood to make films to support our then-ally Russia. I doubt he had to urge very hard as most of those involved in the making of this film had well-known political sympathies. In particular Walter Huston, who made Mission to Moscow the same year. The film was nominated for six Oscars, as well. Clearly this was motivated by something other than an accurate assessment of the film's merits. Objectively speaking, it's a forgettable war drama with some nice action scenes but a terrible script and several embarrassing performances. Just because you're a poor villager doesn't mean you speak like you've been hit in the head too much. But that's exactly the way Anne Baxter, Farley Granger, Jane Withers, and Dana Andrews play their characters. Child actor Eric Roberts is also very annoying. I defended his precocious character in Watch on the Rhine because that was written into the story. Here he just grates on the nerves. Vets Walter Huston, Walter Brennan, and Erich Von Stroheim comport themselves best. Only of interest today as a historical curio and for devoted classic film fans. The washed-out print I saw on TCM wasn't very good. I can't say I'm surprised nobody has paid to clean this one up.

mark.waltz So says Anne Baxter as a Russian peasant girl fighting the Germans in this 1943 war drama. The sentiment is nice, and while the propaganda at that time was necessary, time has proved this line to be false. Like dozens of other war dramas made at the same time, it made a promise that was impossible to keep. In this small Russian village, it appears everybody is content, gets along, and lives their life without major strife. But with the Germans looming in the background, already have invaded other sections of Russia, their days of a peaceful life are numbered. After a horrific sky attack, the peasants get together and plot their response to the carnage.Poor doctor's wife Ann Harding is the first to feel the affect of the Nazi's cruelty. When she is questioned about her husband Walter Huston's whereabouts, she refuses to divulge the information and is brutally beaten to the point of incapacitation. The young people (including Baxter, Jane Withers and Farley Granger) take to the woods, and in the case of pilot Dana Andrews, he takes to the sky where they plot attacks on advancing German troops. They all have the same goal, to preserve their way of life and not fall prey to the Nazi's terrorism. All of the battles are excellently filmed, and some of the scenes are quite horrific.The most evil figures in the film are not the soldiers or German officers, but two Nazi doctors (Erich Von Stroheim and Martin Kosleck) who use the peasants for their blood to cure wounded German soldiers. As these vampire doctors do their thing, we learn that they have two different motives for their actions. Von Stroheim, who would wear officer stripes as German General Rommel in several films, hates the Nazi way of life but for the purpose of self-preservation and his own agenda. Kosleck, a veteran of roles documenting Nazi evil, truly believes in the Nazi agenda. This makes Von Stroheim the more dangerous of the two. I also wonder if using Russian blood would make the German soldiers not be considered 100% Arian, thus defeating the Nazi agenda. If so, then this film has a flawed detail that they greatly overlooked.Overall, this film is an episodic look at what these peasant lives are like. It's a film pretty much without plot, and definitely without a traditional conclusion. It's a series of various attacks between the Russians and the Germans without real exploration as to each of these characters are. The actors really don't have much to do. Some are in for maybe a few minutes, or a few seconds here and there. The peasants are dressed appropriately in country clothes and babushkas, all seem realistic in their setting with one exception. Jane Withers seems too all-American with her bobby soxer mentality and seems like she would be more comfortable in poodle skirts and saddle shoes rather than peasant couture. For a better film on the German invasion of normal people who must become instant defenders of their homeland, see "Edge of Darkness" with Errol Flynn, Ann Sheridan and Walter Huston again playing the town doctor.