L'étranger

Good example of the type of movies made in England during the war, to keep spirits up. The Brits never seem to engage in gung-ho war stuff: which makes for more pleasant viewing.

While nowhere near the league of, say, "A Canterbury Tale", The Demi-Paradise has enough realism (of the British character) to while away a pleasant hour and a half.

During WWII, the American and British film industry made quite a few films that attempted to rehabilitate the perceptions about the Russian people. That's because before the war, they were the enemy, but now that the three countries were allies, the government pushed film makers to portray the Russians in very glowing terms. In the States, films like THE NORTH STAR gave a sickeningly sweet view of the Russians that were just too good to be true. THE DEMI-PARADISE is a British film that also seeks to made the Russians seem more human--more like our friends.

It's interesting to see the famous actor Laurence Olivier playing Ivan Kouznetsoff--a Russian who talks to some British seamen during the war about his visit to London before the war. His accent seemed okay to me, but who am I to judge?! Anyways, the film is all told in flashback form. For the most part, Olivier's character is a bit standoffish and seems to think everything Russian is better--though this improves a bit through the course of the film. As for the Brits, they range from a few suspicious idiots to those who keep pointing out how "they are just like us". A father even wonders out loud about what a great husband Kouznetsoff would make. Talk about over-idealizing the Russians. As a result, the people in the film seem more like caricatures than real people. And as for Olivier, he seemed a bit silly--very stereotypical and broad in his portrayal.

Now despite me not loving this film and disliking how unreal everyone seemed, it was a good bit better than the WWII Hollywood films that were pro-Russia. They went even further to idealize Russia--to such a point that the films are downright dumb, as no group of people is THAT wonderful and happy and full of spunk! Overall, it's an interesting curio but certainly not a film you should run out to rent.

This film is relatively unknown which is a mystery to me. It is one of the great wartime fims of the period.

A wonderfully written story with great direction and a perfect cast. Lord Olivier is absolutely marvelous in the lead, as one might expect, but the supporting actors are equally marvelous with special mention to Penelope Dudley-Ward who charms from her first entrance. Olivier's Russian accent never waivers for a moment but some of his best scenes are those in which ha has no dialogue at all. His bit of business and subtle facial expressions show his immense talent.

See this film if you have the opportunity.

Amazing how this propaganda piece became obsolete in two years! By 1945, Winston Churchill was warning about the dangers of Soviet Russia occupying Eastern Europe, and describing the USSR as the "iron curtain."

Penelope Dudley-Ward is elegance and beauty personified. Laurence Olivier's talent is wasted in this poitical piece at the height of WWII, which even manages to glorify the then empire on which the sun never set.

Times have changed. THE DEMI-PARADISE is a capsule from a time that was far from paradisiac...

One has to keep in mind that this British comedy, about the experiences of a Soviet engineer in Britain, was produced at a critical point in the relations between those two nations. Due to the fact that Joseph Stalin had signed a non-aggression pact with Adolf Hitler, the Soviet Union remained neutral after Britain and France went to war against Germany in 1939. The Soviets didn't come into the war as an ally of Britain until the middle of 1941, after Germany invaded Russia. It was not an easiest alliances. Unlike the case of Britain and the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union had almost nothing in common, either politically or linguistically. In fact, British relations with the Soviet Union had been strained ever since the 1917 Revolution.

The Demi-Paradise was produced as an aid to bridging the cultural gap between those two allies, at least from the British point of view. I have no idea whether it was ever shown in Russia, let alone how it would have been perceived by audiences there.

The story concerns a Russian engineer, played by Olivier, who encounters a pair of British seamen ashore in Murmansk during World War II. Typically, the British are complaining about the difficulties they are having among the "foreigners". To their astonishment, Olivier jokingly informs them in English that it is they who are the "foreigners" in Russia, and then proceeds to recount his own experiences as a "foreigner" when he was assigned to do a job in Britain both before, and during, the war.

In addition to being a wartime propaganda film, The Demi-Paradise is full of the sort of self-deprecating humor the British seem to love. While produced in Britain, the script actually was written by a Russian ex-patriot, Anatole de Grunwald. Consequently, one cannot help but feel that the writer brought a lot of his own personal experiences and impressions into the story. The result is very droll, and one cannot help but feel that the protagonist's experiences are probably universal to any stranger in a strange land.