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A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

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.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

It's true that this movie was produced at a time when we were allied with the Soviet Union against Hitler. But, as Churchill said, when asked about the morality of allying with such a murderous, totalitarian regime, "I would have made a pact with the devil to defeat the Nazis." It was Hollywood's job to laud our allies, and to do so they enlisted Lillian Hellman, longtime Communist dupe and staunch defender of Stalin, right into the 50's. For the score they enlisted Aaron Copland, a fine composer whose Communist sympathies were none the less well known. The result is a love letter to the glories of the Worker's Paradise and the joys of life on the collective farm. No mention here of gulags, the KGB, political murders or food shortages. This film is Exhibit A in defernse of those who were concerned about Communist propoganda in the film industry.

Good cast turns in some of the weakest performances of their careers in this notoriously pro-Soviet propaganda film made at the height of World War II. Franklin Roosevelt urged Hollywood to make films to support our then-ally Russia. I doubt he had to urge very hard as most of those involved in the making of this film had well-known political sympathies. In particular Walter Huston, who made Mission to Moscow the same year. The film was nominated for six Oscars, as well. Clearly this was motivated by something other than an accurate assessment of the film's merits. Objectively speaking, it's a forgettable war drama with some nice action scenes but a terrible script and several embarrassing performances. Just because you're a poor villager doesn't mean you speak like you've been hit in the head too much. But that's exactly the way Anne Baxter, Farley Granger, Jane Withers, and Dana Andrews play their characters. Child actor Eric Roberts is also very annoying. I defended his precocious character in Watch on the Rhine because that was written into the story. Here he just grates on the nerves. Vets Walter Huston, Walter Brennan, and Erich Von Stroheim comport themselves best. Only of interest today as a historical curio and for devoted classic film fans. The washed-out print I saw on TCM wasn't very good. I can't say I'm surprised nobody has paid to clean this one up.

I have watched dozens of "propaganda" films from WW2, and many of them stand on their own as good entertainment. This one smells so badly of propaganda that it's hard to watch.Supposedly, FDR himself wanted this film to be made, so Americans would change their mind about the USSR, which in Orwellian style had become our ally in the fight against Hitler. So what did we get? A sweet first half in which we see that Russians (really Ukranians) are just happy-go-lucky folks like us, who fall in love, have picnics, and love their little towns. Then, in short order, we are treated to scenes of outrages committed by Nazis against our new Communist pals, who do their best to fight back against all odds. It's all so phony, so cloying, so premeditated, that it's hard to bear.What's especially galling is the waste of talent on this film: a good director, a fine cast (including Farley Granger's debut), and music by none other than Aaron Copland, who seems a bit out of place writing variations on Russian folk songs instead of his usual quintessential American material.The big mistake was asking Lillian Hellman, darling of the left and lover of Soviet Russia, to write the screenplay. She suspended all judgment in doing her best to whitewash an evil republic that had murdered millions of its own people, and had recently betrayed the Allies by making a pact with the Nazis. The Russians in her story are all good; the Germans are all unspeakably evil, so the film is shallow in spite of the depth of the cast. My lack of enjoyment was heightened by the terrible print shown on TCM, which looked like a bad VHS copy of a bad VHS copy.

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.