The North Star (1943)

Well, I’ve just seen something that has me flabbergasted. Some of my movie-going friends * * have given me some good-natured ribbing about my liking old war movies and musty smelling “boys’ adventure stories;” even accusing me of having a weakness for jingoism and propaganda. I’m not going to deny that I like these things (if well done) - those of you that are familiar with my movie reviews would be sure to let me know about it if I told such a lie - but I just saw something that caused my stomach to do about three complete flip-flops. I just saw The North Star.

It seems that President FDR wanted to drum up support for giving (billions of dollars worth of) weapons and supplies to, and, yes, allying with Stalin’s USSR, so he entreated Hollywood to make a movie that showed the Soviets in a favorable light, to sort of sell the idea to the average American.

Hollywood responded with The North Star, an “A” list production by Sam Goldwyn with Academy Award winning director Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on the Western Front, Walk in the Sun), and starring Dana Andrews, Walter Huston, Anne Baxter, Farley Granger, Walter Brennan, and Erich Von Stroheim; written by Lillian Hellman, shot by James Wong Howe, and scored by Aaron Copland with lyrics by Ira Gershwin. How’s that for credits? !!!!

The story concerns a Soviet collective in the Ukraine (North Star) and two particular families whose kids (Farley Granger and Anne Baxter) are in love. Several of them leave on a five-day walking holiday to Kiev on June 22, 1941 - the day the Nazi blitzkrieg is unleashed on the USSR.

The first 40 minutes establish the Russians as family-oriented, well groomed, fun-loving, and just plain great folks to be around. They burst into song and dance like a Hollywood musical about every five minutes, in fact, if it weren’t in black and white, you might think you tuned in to The Sound of Music, in progress. Those who think director John Ford was overly sentimental obviously have not seen this movie. :o

The idyll stops when the Stukas arrive, bombing the living #311 out of everything and blowing it to smithereens. And that’s before the tanks, armored cars, and motorcycles arrive. The hikers have not been spared, they were bombed and strafed and some killed and all displaced. Walter Brennan, the senior man of the hikers (man he must have looked like an old codger the day he was born) leads them off the road into the woods where they organize a guerilla resistance. The village does the same, but the guns meant for them are forestalled by the strafing, and, as luck would have it, are found by the children and Brennan, who load them onto wagons and sneak them through the perilous no man’s land back to the village.

Of course, the brave Soviets wreak hell on the evil Nazis, and we are left with admiration for the wonderful lemon-freshened reputation of Joseph Stalin and his Soviet minions. The end is a soliloquy by beauteous Anne Baxter telling us

“All people will … come to see that wars do not have to be. We'll make this the last war. We'll make a free world for all men. The earth belongs to us, the people… yada yada …” this coming from a Soviet…

Apart from the speechifying, which I admit, caused vomitus to rise into my throat, and ignoring the first forty minutes of saccharine Soviet collective idyll, the final action-oriented hour of the movie is pretty dang good. Milestone is great at suggesting violence without overt depiction. He also choreographs great up close and personal action sequences, that, combined with James Wong Howe’s expressionistic cinematography, are thrilling and compel you to watch.

The North Star is available on DVD or VHS, both from companies that specialize in public domain material. As such, the preservation is not all that it could be but, I have to say, as an historical anomaly, the movie is a must-see for fans of Lewis Milestone, WWII films, or those history-minded individuals who want to see shameless, unvarnished propaganda as only Hollywood can dish it out.

Zero stars for truth; Zero stars for believability; Four stars for performance. Five stars for brass. Final rating: 2 stars.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: None of the Above