A slew of Hollywood studio regulars (Walter Huston, Walter Brennan, Dana Andrews, Anne Baxter, Farley Granger, Dean Jagger) do an absolutely terrible job convincing us that they're rural Russians in this bit of WWII propaganda from 1943. The film details what happens when this peaceful Russian community is invaded by Nazis. The younger folk, who are traveling to a larger city for a holiday, find themselves thrown into combat on the road, while the villagers deal with the ransacking of their homes. The film laments the loss of innocence and the necessity for war, but the way it goes about it is nearly ridiculous by today's standards. The first hour or so of the film shows us what life for a typical Russian peasant is like, which according to this film includes breaking into song and dance every five minutes no matter what you're doing and celebrating the joys of being Russian. I've seen musicals that don't have as much music in them as this movie.
Still, much can be forgiven in these studio products of the war years, since their first goal was to keep up morale and only secondarily cared at all about the art of actual film making. They're interesting in the context of film's place in popular culture but they're not interesting films, if that makes any sense.
"The North Star" was amazingly nominated for six Academy Awards when it comes across today as a B movie, and not even a very good one at that. Lillian Hellman, of all people, won her second and last nomination for the film's original screenplay, while it racked up five nominations in the technical categories of b&w art direction, b&w cinematography, dramatic or comedy score, sound recording, and special effects.
Grade: C+
Still, much can be forgiven in these studio products of the war years, since their first goal was to keep up morale and only secondarily cared at all about the art of actual film making. They're interesting in the context of film's place in popular culture but they're not interesting films, if that makes any sense.
"The North Star" was amazingly nominated for six Academy Awards when it comes across today as a B movie, and not even a very good one at that. Lillian Hellman, of all people, won her second and last nomination for the film's original screenplay, while it racked up five nominations in the technical categories of b&w art direction, b&w cinematography, dramatic or comedy score, sound recording, and special effects.
Grade: C+