Tonight's movie was a rather unusual war drama called "Days Of Glory" (1944), which tells the story of a band of Russian guerrillas who are part of the larger Resistance movement in Mother Russia, fighting the invasion of the Nazis during WW2. The film is notable as Gregory Peck's motion picture debut (and I am trusting that you haven't forgotten the correct pronunciation of his name)....
Okay, it's "Grruggerry Peckhk" (i.e noun 'pUkkh'). As a rule of thumb, just try to say it as if he were pronouncing it himself. Say his last name with a hard "K" sound. A Stentorian tone of voice will help.
Peck is the leader of the guerrilla fighters. He had been a builder of dams in civilian life, now he is Commandant. There are several others in this group, including a mountainous former blacksmith, an introspective intellectual and a fearless blonde woman who personifies the Amazonian Warrior ideal. There are also two children on board, orphaned due to the war. The little girl is about 8 or 9 and precocious. She is the chief cook for the cloistered band, and idolises her patriotic teenaged brother to the point where she declares, in a childlike way, that she would marry him if she could.
Finally, there is also Alan Reed, better known as The Voice Of Fred Flintstone. I had never seen him in a featured movie role, but here he is - as you might imagine - on hand to provide comic relief. He portrays the buffoonish "drunken proletariat", and lo and behold he even looks a bit like Flintstone! He gets drunk as soon as the movie starts and shortly thereafter he bellows away, and you can clearly hear the voice of Fred as it was to appear 16 years later on one of our favorite television shows.
The little girl (the cook) has hidden a stowaway in the group's underground hideout, the basement of a former monastery. She is a young woman on the run, made homeless by the stampeding Germans. By profession she is a ballerina, and she is played by a real life Russian/American ballerina named Tamara Tourmanova, who was the wife of Casey Robinson, the guy who wrote the movie.
She is darkly beautiful and passionately anti-war, providing a contrast to Peck's enthusiastic militarism. She observes that he seems to enjoy blowing up trains and killing German soldiers one-on-one. He admits this is true but goes on to explain why, and you can guess why : the Krauts have taken over his homeland and are killing Russians wholesale.
Tamara Tourmanova is the "Rrrooushian" (pronounced with a roll of the tongue) soul of the movie, the artistic heart of the group, and at first Peck resists her, but because this is Hollywood and we know the formula by now, we are only waiting for the two to fall in love.
This takes a while, however, because the film is slow to develop. There is a lot of fol-de-rol to begin with as director Jacques Tournier takes his time to set up his characters in a screenwriterly ethnic scenario. The first 40 minutes of the film pass by with the group interacting with one another, the little girl running the kitchen, Fred Flintstone getting hammered, and the intellectual leading everyone in the singing of folksongs. Almost no war action takes place during this time, save for the capture and killing of a German soldier, which seems implausible as it takes place, but serves as a plot device to indoctrinate the pacifist ballerina into the military group, as she is the one who has performed the killing.
Much of the film has to do with the romance that develops between Peck and Tourmanova. It feels alternately stiff and dreamlike, because Peck - remember that this is his film debut - comes off as a wooden Indian, and in the other ditection Tourmanova - the majestic ballerina - is just a bit overly dreamy. I mean, you would fall in love with her if you were Peck, but because the combination of the two is at extremes - of the blank-facedness of Peck on the one hand, and ultra-Russian romanticism of Tamara on the other hand, what should have been a huge emotional payoff doesn't happen. Peck, in his debut, is pretty stiff,
There are a few scenes of war footage that merit attention. The brief sequence of the sabotaging of a German train is well done, as is the volunteer mission of the Fearless Amazon to cross enemy lines to deliver a crucial message to Russian headquarters at the front.
There is excellent black and white photography throughout, and one would have hoped to see a decent war movie given the talent involved. But it's really a mess, I am sorry to report, and a slow one at that.
I should also add that the "rah-rah" cheerleading for the Russian cause is a bit perplexing because it is over the top, considering the time the film was made. I mean, watch the guerrilla oath that Tamara Tourmanova swears to, at the end of the film, and you would swear yourself that you are watching a Communist propaganda film. Obviously, anyone would cheer the fight of the Russian people in WW2 against the Nazis, but for some reason director Tournier wants to take things a step further, as if Stalin were head of the studio.
It's a little bit weird, even for Hollywood, which was also making ultra-reactionary anti-Japanese films at the time. The anti German and anti Japanese propaganda was understandable given the circumstances of World War Two, the most horrible time in human history. But here, the overly pro-Russian message of the movie feels out of place, not because the Russian people aren't cool - we love all people here at the blog, and I have always admired the Russian Soul - but because the regime of Uncle Joe Stalin was even more murderous than Hitler's.
The movie just feels a little strange in that way, at least in hindsight.
But more to the point of the review, it's not very good.
It's not terrible, not even bad really, and is certainly worth a view for WW2 motion picture fans. But you'll have to be like me, and be willing to sit through a lot of existential Russian hardship done Hollywood Style, with a wooden Gregory Peck in the lead, to even semi-enjoy it.
And that's what I did, I semi-enjoyed it. Therefore, I give "Days Of Glory" a single Thumb Up.
Don't rule out seeing it, but it's not one of the great WW2 films in the Hollywood canon. More like a curiosity. ////
That's all for tonight. See you in the morn, with love thoughout. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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