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the audience applauded

Good movie but grossly overrated

Admirable film.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

First, I was amazed a film like this could be made in International Socialist (Communist) infested Hollywood in the late 1940's. Read the book "Hollywood Party" by Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley. A huge proportion of Hollywood's behind the scenes employees (not the stars) took their marching orders from Moscow. This was at the same time the studio heads were in cahoots with the National Socialists of Germany in making sure nothing bad was said about Herr Hitler.The funny part was the Ribbentrop/Molotov Non-aggression Pact where the Nazis and the Communists agreed to carve up Poland. Up until then the Hollywood myrmidons blindly followed the anti-Fascist line of Stalin. Stalin needed a word to describe his internal enemies so he picked "Fascist". I mean the loyal Communist apparatchiks he executed by the thousands were suddenly 'Fascist'? The word stuck both in the UUSR and the US and the blind left today who won't read history still use this epithet against everyone they disagree with, not remotely knowing the word's true meaning. Mussolini of course came from a famous Socialist family and was the editor of Italy's leading Socialist publication: "Avante". Fascism, Nazism, Communism -- all repressive Socialist political systems. Anyway, the hard leftists in Hollywood after denouncing Nazis and Fascists for a decade now had to praise them to the sky by orders from Stalin. Being the rotten people they were, they turned on a dime without even blinking - like Orcs.Why does this all matter? Well, Walter Pidgeon's character like 99% of Allied soldiers had little clue about the horrible nature of Communism given the propaganda about Uncle Joe Stalin being our ally. Pidgeon gets a first hand glimpse of the forced repatriation of USSR dissidents when the first man he tries to turn over, an elderly gentleman, requests that he pack a few things, walks into the next room and you hear an instantaneous gunshot - he had blown his brains out. Pidgeon takes his orders in turning over these poor people waiting to be executed or put in the Gulag back in the "Workers Paradise" but finally realizes with the help of Ethel Barrymore's Character - Mother Superior - that he is committing an awful crime against humanity and fights back. Just watch the rest of the movie as it plays out.If you want to learn more about the Allied treachery, read "Operation Keelhaul" by Julius Epstein.Hollywood is pretty craven - imagine a Spielberg type being given this script - no way he would make this film. He would never turn on his ideological masters. The enemy in Hollywood will always be Nazis and Fascists, the ideological allies of the Communists. Muslim terrorists could blow up Hollywood and the first script about that event would have the Muslims being replaced by the Waffen SS without even the slightest hesitation.

In 1949, when this was released, the terms of the Cold War had been reasonably well clarified. A huge vacuum had been left by the collapse of the Nazi Reich and arguments followed over the question of how to divide it up between the several victors.This film incorporates many of the more important issues, at least as we perceived and interpreted those issues at the time. The in conflict in occupied Austria is personalized in the atheistic military sensibilities of Walter Pidgeon, the simple faith of Mother Superior Ethel Barrymore, and the sneering treachery of Louis Calhern as Colonel Piniev. To maintain the interest of those who are bored by politics, there is the tragic romance between British officer Peter Lawford and the yummy displaced person Janet Leigh. The conflict boils down to what should be done with Leigh. The orders are to repatriate her and turn her over to the Soviet Union.There is a masterful film out there covering some of these issues. That film is called "The Third Man." This one is full of stereotypes involving politics, religion, and love. Ho hum.Brothers and sisters, this is really preachy. The Russians show no humanity, no remorse. The British sometimes bumble but play fair and are earnest about their humanitarianism. They're gently guided in the right direction by the quiet and elliptical remarks of the lovable old Mother Superior. The conflicts are real enough. Who wanted to live in the USSR under the brutal regime of Stalin? But there are ideological arguments between Pidgeon and Calhern, the latter sounding like a wind-up mannequin programmed to spout Marxism for Dummies. It has three things going for it. Nice shots of a C 47 taking off and landing, the perky presence of Angela Lansbury, and it serves as a peek into the past, like looking through the wrong end of a telescope, a kind of cinematic time capsule. It should be shown in all high school classes. Not only as a picture of historical reality but as a splendid example of propaganda. The Russians were producing similar films at the same time. (They were shown in Europe but never in the US.) During and preceding the war, Germany made the same kind of movies. All of them clearly identified the good guys and the bad guys, just like in a John Wayne Western from the 30s. Thinking was treated as an irritant, whereas, as Charles Sanders Peirce observed, "belief is thought at rest."

"The Red Danube" is a strong 1949 film about post-war Europe, starring Walter Pidgeon, Peter Lawford, Angela Lansbury, Janet Leigh, and Ethel Barrymore.There are several levels to this film. One is the agreement among the Allies to repatriate people to their native countries after the war. This film deals with the British sector, led by Pidgeon and his team, who are charged with aiding in the repatriation. Another level is the spiritual aspect - the Pidgeon character, "Hooky" Nicobar, has begun to doubt the existence of any entity that could allow such horror to happen in the world, including his own personal tragedy. And there's the love story between Maria (Janet Leigh), a Soviet ballerina, and Major 'Twingo' McPhimister.When displaced Russians would rather commit suicide than return to Russia, Hooky begins to doubt what Colonel Piniev (Louis Calhern) is telling him about what awaits these people back in the homeland. But he has to follow orders, so in spite of protests, he turns over ballerina Maria to the Soviets.MGM made a film later on, "Never Let Me Go" about a ballerina trying to get out of Russia; here a ballerina tries to keep from going back. This film has much more depth than "Never Let Me Go," and is more gritty, showing the old and weak DPs, unusable for slave labor, that the Russians foist upon the British sector toward the end of the film.The spiritual angle in this film is interesting - has God failed man, the nun (Ethel Barrymore) asks, or has man failed God? Is "following orders" when you know you're sending people to certain death sufficient? "The Red Danube" is well acted. Discovered by Norma Shearer, Janet Leigh had only been in films two years when she made this, but she had already racked up some experience. She's fresh-faced, sympathetic, and sweet as Maria Buhlen. Peter Lawford doesn't have much to do; Angela Lansbury is delightful as part of the team, and Walter Pidgeon does an excellent job as the troubled colonel. As the Mother Superior where Audrey Quail, the colonel, and Twingo are billeted, Ethel Barrymore gives a superb performance as a woman of implacable faith who tries to help Hooky with his crisis and aid Maria.I thought this was a very good film, thought-provoking, with good direction by George Sidney.

Russian colonel Louis Calhern is looking for prima ballerina Janet Leigh to take her back to the Soviet Union in post World War II Vienna in 1946. His quest is the heart of The Red Danube. The Red Danube came out in 1949 and is set at the time when people thought it possible to keep the wartime Allies on the same page. That was not to be due to the differences in the two political systems that combined to defeat Hitler.Walter Pidgeon is recently transferred to Vienna and gets an order to find her and turn her over to the Russians. He doesn't count on three things, his aide Peter Lawford falling for Janet, the formidable presence of Mother Superior Ethel Barrymore who is sheltering Leigh, and his own growing conscience about what he sees around him.People would rather die than return to the worker's paradise that Communism has created. I mean literally, both here in the film and in real life back in the day. It's easy to dismiss The Red Danube as a Cold War inspired film. But the situations are way too real.Best performance in the film is Ethel Barrymore, followed closely by Pidgeon as the British Colonel with a conscience. Pidgeon is a nonbeliever and his debates with Barrymore about religion are the best thing in the film. Part of the film has Pidgeon getting Barrymore on a military plane to see the Pope in Rome during a conference concerning refugees. Now mind you this is Pius XII we are talking about who before and as Pope never quite saw the danger Hitler was to the church that Stalin was.But I'm willing to bet that seeing Ethel Barrymore delineate the character of the Mother Superior this was a woman who walked the Christian walk as well. I'm even willing to bet she probably sheltered a few Jews during the holocaust as well.