Watch Mission to Moscow For Free

People are voting emotionally.

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

This 1943 film has an infamous reputation as the worst of the pro Soviet films Hollywood made during World War II. Based on the memoirs of Joseph Davies (who was ambassador to the Soviet Union at the height of the Stalinist purges of the 1930s and appears as himself in the embarrassing movie intro), it is mind numbingly naïve about the nature of Stalinist Russia. The most ridiculous part of the movie is surely its depiction of the Moscow trials of 1937, where the defendants, portrayed as witless, cowardly thugs (except for Bukharin, which looks like an evil genius), are shown as unquestionably guilty. But even the Stalin-Hitler pact of 1939 and the Soviet invasion of Finland later that year are defended here.Its monumental naivete aside, it is kind of well done, in the sense that it was filmed competently (by Michael Curtiz, who directed Casablanca among many other films) and is politically embarrassing but never boring. Stalin reportedly liked the movie and had it shown several times in his private Kremlin screening room to his Politburo buddies. Walter Huston played ambassador Davies. Many little known character actors play the different Soviet politicians, and they were obviously hired due to the physical resemblance to the characters they were playing.

Seventy-years later, this Warner Bros. production stands mainly as an historical curiosity. The movie remains interesting for its unbridled admiration for Russia (the term 'Soviet Union' is not used). After decades of anti-Soviet portrayals, this footage really comes as a surprise. Still, the narrative furnishes historical insight into the need to support a dubious ally, particularly while the war's outcome was still in doubt (1943). No doubt, the film's early part amounts to a whitewash of Stalin's show trials, where many old Bolsheviks were eliminated as possible rivals. This, I think, remains one of the film's most hollow parts.As a movie, the two-hours are well-produced, and well-acted by Huston without hint of swagger or ego. His Ambassador Davies may be wrong in many respects but he's not dislikable in the firmness of his opinions. Importantly, about the only dramatic interest is whether a Euro-American coalition can come together to forestall Hitler's grand plans. Of course, the various political maneuverings are much too complex for real movie analysis. Then too, as political background, the Soviets could never be sure whether the capitalist West preferred a fascist Germany to a socialist USSR (consider, for example, the Spanish civil war {1936-39}). On the other hand, there is colorful footage of martial parades in Red Square and docu-footage of happy laborers in factories and fields. However, much of this can now be gotten on The History Channel. Sure, the film works as wartime propaganda, perhaps the only pro-Soviet panegyric ever to come out of Hollywood. Still, it's ironic that only a few years later, Hollywood would turn on a dime and demonize everything Soviet. But then we were assured that The Red Danube (1949) or The Iron Curtain (1949) should not be considered propaganda. After all, we were engaged in another kind of conflict, namely, the Cold War. Funny how these things work, isn't it.

Extremely pro-Stalin & Soviet Union movie made in Hollywood at the very hight of WWII when Germany was on the verge, during the battle of Stalingrad, of knocking the USSR out of the war. Based on the book "Mission to Moscow" by the former US Soviet Ambassador Joseph E.Davies, who in fact introduces the film, were shown how the Soviet Union under the leadership of Premier Joseph Stalin was the envy of the free world in it's heroic struggle against Nazi Germany. It was the Soviet Red Army who that during the course of the war lost an estimated 9 million of its fighting man and women battling Nazi Germany.Given the job as Ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1937 by Pres. Roosevelt, Jack Young, Davies, Walter Huston, is given the assignment to check out what's going on in that country and report back to the president if it will be a reliable ally if a future conflict between Britian & France that breaks out with Nazi Germany. In what seems like no time at all Davies develops a love affair with the USSR and it's ruthless dictator Joseph or "Uncle Joe" as President Roosevelt calls him the Man of Steel himself Joseph V. Stalin played by the kind sweet and fatherly looking Mamart Kipper. The what seems like very naive Davies,who should have known better,is completely blown away by Uncle Joe's "great" accomplishments. That's in him bringing the backward and 19th century Russia into the 20th century with his series of 5 year economic plans. Plans not originated by "Uncle Joe" but his late boss and first leader of the Soviet Union Nickolai 'Nicky" Lennin.Even though very pro-Stalin the movie surprisingly doesn't skip over the notorious 1937/38 purge trials conducted by Stailn's henchmen in the Soviet Ministry of Justice and the dreaded NKVD. It was at those trials that the almost entire Soviet diplomatic and Red Army office corps were convicted and executed for treason. They were all accused in them planning with the exiled and deposed, by Stalin, Leon Trotsky, Sam Goldenberg, with the Hitler's Germany and Imperial Japan of trying to undermined and overthrow the Stalin regime. As It turned it wasn't treason that they were guilty of but Stalin's hysterical paranoia of feeling threatened by anyone close to him trying to throw him out of power!The movie goes on making excuse after excuse for Stalin's crimes,like the invasions of Poland Finland and the Baltic States,in that they were needed to get his country ready for the coming invasion by Hitler's Germany which he was certain was soon to come. Yet when the Nazi invasion finally came in June 1941 Stalin's well prepared for it Red Army was caught flat-footed having the German Army reach the very gates of Moscow before the year was out. Davies now back in the US and a private citizen does his best to get the American people, who at the time was very isolationist, ready to both supply the Soviet Union with military hardware as well as join it in it's battle against Germany. But as fate would have it it was japan's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, six months after Hitler invaded the USSR, that did the trick for both him and President Roosevelt. It was Pres.Roosevelt who's behind the scenes actions was doing everything to incite a German U-Boat attack on US shipping in order to get the US into the war. What was so ironic about that is that it was Hitler's Germany who did everything possible to avoid a conflict with the USA, even having his U-boats not return fire after being fired upon by the US Navy, not the US that was the first to declare war!Despite the Soviet Union being an ally of the US at the time of the films release it in fact bombed at the box office not even making back half of the 1.5 million dollars it took to produce it. when shown to Russian audiences in Moscow people watching it, in them knowing what a horror "Uncle Joe" Stalin really was, could't refrain from laughing out load when ever Davies showed his enthusiasm for the Stalin regime as well as "Uncle Joe" himself! Even if it meant a one way ticket to a Siberian gulag or Soviet firing squad if they were ever identified,with the lights in the theater turned on, of showing disrespect to "Uncle Joe" and his "great" accomplishments for the Russian people!P.S No matter how ridicules and historically inaccurate,in covering up Stalin's crimes, the film "Mission to Moscow" is the one thing it got right is that without the help of the USSR the US and its western allies would have never won the war against Nazi Germany. According to official German casualty statistics the German military lost an astounding 2,400,000 killed and missing together with almost 3,500,000 wounded in the fighting on the Eastern or Russian front alone! And that's only up to November 30, 1944 when the German military stopped keeping casualties statistics! That's without even counting the enormous losses that the German army suffered fighting against the Red Army from December 1944 to the end of the war in May 1945! Those tremendous losses of manpower as well as military equipment against the Soviet Union would have fully equipped and manned as much as 400 Nazi infantry and armored divisions! A German army of almost 6 million strong which could have been thrown against the US Britain and their allies in not only North Africa and Italy but in the savage and bloody battles of Western Europe in 1944/5 which would have well turned the tied of battle in Hitler's favor! In fact there would have been no possibility of a Western Front without an Eastern Front tying down as much as 80% of the German Army needed to engage the advancing some 8 to 10 million strong Red Army!

A few months ago I saw a documentary called BEHIND CLOSED DOORS which focused upon the machinations and political intrigue in the Kremlin during the second world war . A clip from MISSION TO MOSCOW was shown and is a habit of mine I decided to look it up on this site only to notice that despite being directed by the great Michael Curtiz it was lowly regarded but decided to track it down anyway There's an old saying that " My enemy's enemy is my friend " and nothing proves this more than the second world war where the capitalist democracies of Britain and America supported the Soviet Union during the second world war . The film revolves around painting the Soviet Union as a country Britain and America can do business with and a key ally against the aggression of the Nazis and imperial Japanese . There's nothing wrong with this of course and 1943 had seen massive defeats for Nazi Germany at Stalingrad and Kursk which put the writing on the wall that Nazi Germany was going to lose the war The problem with the film is that it doesn't celebrate the bloody victories won by Soviet blood but starts before the war where ambassador Joe Davies visits the USSR and finds it completely like the United States . Soviet workers only give a proportion of their pay to the state similar to taxation and there's even American advisers working in the socialist state who have become bored living on a diet of caviar The only real difference between Soviet Russia and America is that the Soviet state is being held back by a conspiracy involving Trotskyite agents and Nazis who are embarking on a campaign of sabotage against Stalinism . We know this must be true because it's pointed out by an American adviser and later Davies states that the trial of the saboteurs is no different from a trial held in the USA . There is no doubt that the defendants such as Tukhachevsky and Radek are guilty as charged . Davies says it's a fair trail so if an American says that it must be true There is a bitter irony in portraying the Soviet Union is such a light and that was that the film was targeted as being communist propaganda in 1950 by the House Of Un-American Activities that led to Jack Warner himself being questioned by congress . It seems strange that nations suffer from a collective amnesia where politics is concerned . The film is nothing more than a propaganda piece for an anti- Nazi ally though not a very good one and remains a curiosity more than anything else