The North Star (1943)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

A great cast, good sets, accurate historical costumes and plausible plot. All this is mired by a needless pro-collective/communist depiction of Ukraine under Stalin's reign of terror (which culminated in over 5 million Ukrainians starving to death). This happy go lucky peasant life is equivalent to Hollywood's "Step n Fetch" depiction of African Americans during this same time period. True it is a war time propaganda film but the Hollywood socialist bias and blindness to Communist terror would result in the McArthism backlash of the 50s. Film historians have rightly attcked the abuses of McCarthism but never truly come to grips with Hollywood's failure to address the mass murders and reign of terror of Communism.

I saw this movie right after the war. I was than 14 and it made a great impression on me especially because the German invasion of our village was not so brutal as shown here. Nevertheless I always remembered the the story even after 60 years (!). As I see it now and after having read a lot about WWII the story seems to be biased by portraying only Germans as heartless killers and war loving people. Wars happen and bring about atrocities from both sides. But wars can bring about much compassion from both the attackers as the attacked. From this viewpoint the rating by the Commission is correct. All nations have committed crimes against humanity in the past yet those perpetrated by the 'own' people are considered less fearful. The movie is wrong in that Germany considered the Ukraine as a possible ally. Rather, the Russians themselves were seen as enemies owing to the immense sufferings (hunger and millions of deaths owing to the famine caused by the forced collectivization of agriculture by the communists. So the brutal attack can have happened in Russia when the invasion started on 06/22/1941. This is not a plea for the Nazi atrocities committed during the War but just a reminder that a nation should beware of using armed forces against other nations. And if so, show compassion to the losers, who mostly did only their duty.

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.

I am amazed by the intensity of some of the comments.The 1943 movie North Star celebrated Stalin's dictatorship over Ukrania, presenting the joys of colectivisation on the humble peasants among whom was the veteran actor Walter Brennan who otherwise played stereotyped American personages. Where the joys of collectivization were simply leftist rot and John Wayne is said to have hated this movie, the movie correctly presents the intensity with which the Russians fought to expel the German invaders. Most German veterans of the Great Patriotic War note that Russians fought on when British or French would have stacked arms and sat by the roadside watching panzers drive by.The movie of course does not present the other side of the coin. Ukrania was a province where Stalin had his greatest problem. Resentment flared intensely against the Soviet regime particularly in the rural areas which retained their allegiance to the Church and which resented collectivization. Many Ukranians defected to the German cause.This film of course was shot in 1942 in the heat of the war. I hardly would have deemed it sane to have made a movie about citizens of an allied country who had defected to the enemy.I do recall that this film went to TV's Million Dollar Movie in the 1950s substantially edited and presented as a German invasion of Hungary and ended with a voice over reference to the Hungarian revolt in 1956.