The North Star

My parents took me to see this film at the Rex cinema in Hanworth England in 1943. I was 6 years old! About half way through the film, there was an air raid. We had to leave the cinema and go to a shelter. I remember the story and especially the song, which the children were singing on the cart. The film has been shown many times on television, but I have never been able to watch it. I guess that this must have some connection with the air raid. I am now 74 years old and the film is being shown again on television tomorrow afternoon. I hope to finally be able to watch it all the way through, at long last and lay to rest whatever has prevented me doing so previously.

I have finally seen this film to the end! Not bad after 68 years. I now realise why it made such an impression on me. In the film, the children and some adults were bombed and machine gunned by aircraft, after jumping from the carts into a ditch. It was at this point that we had to leave the cinema because of an air raid, having just seen children killed on the screen. I had already experienced many air raids at the age of 3 years and 9 months, during the Septmber 1940 Blitz and I still have vivid memories of the bombing, destruction and fires. Am I correct, or is my memory failing in that I believe the original title for the U.K release was 'The Red Star'???

In its time, this probably fulfilled its desired purpose reasonably well, with a fine cast and some effective scenes depicting the suffering caused by Nazi troops. It is probably more interesting now, when it can be viewed with more objectivity, and when it is interesting for a new set of reasons. Its depiction of life in the Soviet Union is a revealing statement about the priorities of its time. The actual movie and story, viewed apart from any and all political issues, work quite well at times, while falling short at others.

The first part of the story simply dwells on the daily lives of the residents of a Ukrainian farm town. This part is quite slow, and would be of little interest except for the sharp change of tone that comes with the Nazi attack. As banal as the lives of the villagers may have seemed, they certainly did nothing to deserve the suffering they bore as a result of the invasion. Things pick up dramatically in the second part, and at the same time the characters come more sharply into focus.

Naturally, the scenario is more fiction than fact, especially in its idyllic depiction of life under Stalin's rule. More than anything else, this reflects the urgent desire of the US Government (whose hand was supposedly quite active in the production) to promote full-fledged public support for working with the Soviet Union against the Axis. Like the majority of features in any era that address a then-contemporary issue, it looks much different when viewed years afterward. The truth about both Stalin and Hitler is much easier for us now to determine than it was for the movie's original viewers.

The cast helps considerably in making it work on a dramatic level. Experienced stars like Walter Huston and Walter Brennan combine with then-young performers like Anne Baxter, Farley Granger, and others to create a generally interesting set of characters. Jane Withers also has a good role, as a hapless but often endearing young woman who is desperate to help. Lillian Hellman brought her considerable reputation to the screenplay, although this kind of material is not really her strength. Lewis Milestone shows his steady hand in the battle sequences.

Because the cast, director, and writer all add their weight to the production, this works well enough as a fictional drama as long as you set aside what you thought or think about the USSR. As history, the story is not reliable, but the movie itself is interesting as one of the more earnest attempts of its day to use cinema to influence public opinion.

In the early 1960's, when "The North Star" was syndicated to local TV stations, the film was re-cut and the title changed to "Armored Attack." Decades later, Lewis Milestone's classic has been re-released in its original form.

Other posters to this site have commented on the folk-peasant musicale that dominates the first half-hour of the film, so I'll dispense mention of it here. Suffice it to say, however, that from the first scene of violence -- a merciless daytime bombardment of civilians on a quiet Ukrainian country road -- the film gathers emotional strength. And when Anne Baxter, playing a schoolgirl, gazes for the first time upon the horrific vision of her school chums, now dead as the result of mechanized warfare, she states evenly, "We're not young anymore." She and a few others escape into the forest, emerging now and then to engage in hit-and-run sabotage against the Nazi aggressors. The film builds to a climax in which Russian partisans astride horses attempt to take back their village from the better- equipped Germans, giving director Milestone an opportunity to reprise the long tracking shots of approaching figures that became his trademark visual motif.

When Samuel Goldwyn produced "The North Star," he pulled out all the stops. He enlisted James Wong Howe to photograph, William Cameron Menzies to design the production, and Aaron Copland to write the background score. The cast, besides Baxter, includes Dana Andrews, Farley Granger, Walter Huston, and, as the Nazi You Love to Hate, the legendary Erich Von Stroheim, as a German military doctor who compromises his professional oath through medical experimentation. Supplies of blood for the German wounded have dried up, so Dr. Von Stroheim orders the village children rounded up and brought to the local school, where he draws great quantities of blood from them -- so much so, that a few kids die from the process. Effective and highly dramatic, it certainly beats visions of the Hun boiling Belgian babies in oil.

The North Star is at least as good a propaganda movie as much of Hollywood's wartime output and the astonishing range of talent that helped in its making makes it important rather than brilliant. While not impossible, it would be difficult for this collection of top drawer movie makers to devise a real dog of a production and even the most rabid anti-commie could not put this movie into the same bag as say 'Hitler, Dead of Alive' or 'The menace of the rising sun'. The North Star was multi Oscar nominated and even factoring in the mores of the period, this cannot be dismissed entirely.

Reading the posts on the movie here, it appears to me that some commentators really miss the whole point of US propaganda at the time and condemn The North Star out of context. These responses suggest to me that The North Star's punch has lost none of its original power.

The picture is set during Nazi invasion, on June 22, 1941, the Fuehrer sent his war machine crashing across the frontiers of the USSR , unleashing a furious Bltzkrieg. The Fuehrer,-known his hatred for Bolshevism-, described the assault on Russia as a crusade against communism, but he obviously was motived by a need for wheat, oil, and mineral supplies to enable him to defy the British blockade. This is flag-waving and propaganda film but at the time US and USSR were allied, it deals about an idyllic Soviet village. The first part describes life of a little town, a pacific village with good people, singing, dancing and living happily. When Nokya(Dana Andrews) and young villagers(Anne Baxter, Farley Granger, Jane Withers) go to Kiev are picked up by an old countryman(Walter Brennan). While they're singing and amusing themselves, then happen a Nazi invasion and they're bombed.The second part is quite starkly moving developing account of deeds that befall about the villagers and when they go into action.

The interesting film is a gripping war story with valiant villagers facing on Nazis.This unnerving epic depicts the horror war as Nazi atrocities and as the resistance fighters roam the Russian countryside attacking during the invasion. Although melodramatic moments in overall effects, also has moments of astounding power with some overwhelming sequences. Thought-provoking screenplay amid much feuding writer Lillian Hellman and producer/director , and Hellman told her disappointment on the adaptation. The credits are extraordinaries, prestigious actors, Walter Huston as the village medic, Dana Andrews, Farley Granger in his first role along with Anne Baxter, Erich Von Stroheim as usual official Nazi, Dean Jagger, among them.Cinematography supplied by the master James Wong Howe and score by the classic Aaron Copland with lyrics by Ira Gershwin.

The motion picture is well directed by Lewis Milestone, he was born in the Ukraine(where is set the movie), but emigrated to America at 18 and he served in WWI. He often made chronicles of wartime conflicts and persisted in showing horror war from the point of view of the ordinary soldier. As he showed WWI(All quiet on the western front), WWII(A walk in the sun,Purple heart, Halls of Motzuma,Edge and darkness) and Korean war(Pork Chop Hill); and directed several other excellent movies in different fields, drama(Of mice and men, Strange love of Martha Ivers), adventures(Mutiny on the Bounty) and heist-comedy(Ocean's eleven), among others.