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mutikonka1
Reviews
Went the Day Well? (1942)
Very good for its day
At first I was a little disappointed that this film bore little resemblance to the excellent Graham Greene short story on which it was based. In that story it is the poacher, the social inferior and outcast in the village, who suspects and then defeats the Nazi imposters. But this movie is in some ways even more radical for its time. We see these stock British characters - the vicar, the local gentry and the salt-of-the-earth shopkeepers committing brutal acts of violence to defend their little bit of English soil. It raises the question of how far we would go to defend our little corner of England. Interestingly, in the only part of British territory to come under Nazi control, the Channel Islands, there were no such acts of resistance. On the contrary the Islanders were law abiding citizens who did little to upset their German occupiers except scrawl a few V for Victory signs on the walls of Jersey and Guernsey. In this film it is quite interesting to hear them talk of freedom and evil - terms that were easily understood then and which had not been hijacked by those with other agendas in the "war on terror". Ironically, the Major {Kommandant] alludes to this when he talks about "the famous invasion that the papers are always trying to scare us about". The Boche is devilishly good at propaganda. In reality, at the time this film was released it was already implausible and out of date. There was no longer any threat of German invasion by 1942 - quite the contrary - we were already preparing for the invasion of re-occupation of N Africa and Italy. Nevertheless, a very interesting film with some very incisive and cynical dialogue. (Do you know what morale is? Yeah, something the wops ain't got ...).
We Dive at Dawn (1943)
Good show, chaps
I watched this expecting to see the usual British stiff upper lip stereotypes and was surprised to find the dialogue remarkably natural and tinged with black humour. It was more like Eastenders Goes to Sea than In Which We Serve. The scenes during the approach and attack are remarkably realistic in their depiction of a fighting ship and the stuff ups and banter among the ship's company (well at least based on my service in the 1970s). Some of the throwaway lines are very witty ("I'm not joining the Band of Hope just to please some greasy fish fryer!). My only complaint is that they didn't show what happened to the Irish coxswain and his bride to be, or the tattooed PO and his "I Love Arabella" tattoo!