Quarante-huit heures

A splendid movie well acted and directed, the story grips you from the start,the film includes self sacrifice and treacherous behaviour.The pace of the movie is fantastic not a dull moment.There is one scene which shows that ordinary decent people when cornered can fight back with a fierce tenacity when their homeland is threatened.This movie is the inspiration behind the eagle has landed and i think it would be a hit if it was remade.

Alberto Cavalcanti's outstanding piece of wartime propaganda is worthy of Hitchcock at his best. It's a surprisingly bleak and sometimes vicious study of British resilience, light years away from the dull Hollywood sentimentality of "Mrs Miniver". It's about a group of Fifth Columnists who take over a small British village in 1942 in preparation for the German invasion and of how the villagers fight back.

It has all the usual stereotypical villagers, (the post-mistress, the squire etc), but these clichéd parts are turned on their heads with surprisingly suspenseful results. Good performances, too, from everybody in a film that is largely undervalued, certainly in this country where we are inclined to acknowledge our 'heroism' but draw the line at going beyond that, as this film does, somewhat uncomfortably.

For a film made in 1942 this film is fairly hard hitting as it does not shy away from the realities and emotions of warfare. The plot gradually gains pace and the atmosphere is tense as the ordinary English folk rally round to face the professional soldiers of Nazi Germany. The quality of acting is superb throughout and although there are signs of propaganda, it is kept to a minimum and is not overly biased. Highly recommended and very cheap to buy (at least in England it is).

I saw 'Went the Day Well' in 1943, as a 12 year old in war-time England.What I remember most about the film is that it was utterly convincing, both in the authenticity of the setting and the quality of the acting,My friends and I were, of course, perhaps less sophisticated and streetwise than the 12 year olds of today, nevertheless, the film left a lasting impression and I, at least, can remember it in a fair amount of detail, even after the passage of nearly sixty years. The least convincing part to us was the fight between the soldiers,English and German, towards the end of the film,located in and around the church - perhaps this was because we had watched too many carefully staged propanganda epics belittling the ability of the Germans ! All in all,though, a film which brought home the fact that the freedom we take for granted can so easily be lost unless we are eternally vigilant.

Now I am a sucker for "what if" stories, and what better to have Germans occupying an English village during the war.

What we have in this gem of a film is a great story, we see the villagers pull together and overcome the foe in heroic fashion. We are not spared the horrors of war, I think particularly of the scene when the telephone operator having summoned the courage to kill her German captor is killed trying to contact someone for help, you don't see anything but because of that it is all the more powerful. You are on the edge of your seat hoping the eggs with the message on will get through. We see a lady driving in her car, singing to herself, we then cut to the home guard being mown down on the road, their bodies cleared just as the woman drives round the corner. The two scenes together make for a powerful contrast. Bloody good stuff.

The pace continues through the film at such a rate that you do find yourself on the edge of the seat, the acting is great, though some may find the clipped English accent a little annoying, I liked the fact that there are a number of different accents from cockney to Yorkshire all making the "in it together" message more powerful. When the villagers start to fight back we get to see some hero's, none more so than the lady at the manor house who to save the children throws herself onto a grenade, I remember seeing this scene for the first time and being very moved by it, and every time I watch it again it has the same effect.

As a piece of propaganda it must have worked like a dream as a film it is well made and acted, what more could you want. Even more impressive is that it has aged very little.