The Day Will Dawn (1942)

Very Cool!!!

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

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

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

This early Deborah Kerr role steals the film, The Day Will Dawn, an early WW2 film about the invasion and occupation of Norway, a topic seldom seen in Hollywood films. English films tended to explore topics that Hollywood films avoided. In Hollywood, intellectual exploration was considered box office poison. This movie, despite the hilarious nazi scene of a nazi officer killing a Norweigen traitor by shooting at the wall, is very effective for most of the film, and highlights Kerr's acting talents. The rest of the cast, particularly Kerr's father, do a very good job in the film. Some portrayals of the nazis border on cartoonish, but that is to be expected, considering the time period. A good WW actioner.

A brisk story of Hugh Williams as a British reporter who plays the horses, knocks about Europe as the war begins, and trades quips and rounds of beer with such colleagues as Ralph Richardson.He's exiled to Norway for his light and careless approach to his duties, but Norway turns into a hot spot when the Germans take it over and build a secret U-boat base. With the help of locals, who include Deborah Kerr, Williams manages to escape but the government sends him back to the village to set up a signal to the bombers that will try to demolish the submarine base.The base is, in fact, destroyed by the raid but Williams and many others are taken into custody and sentenced to be executed. This leads to a few harrowing moments in the jail, while Williams comforts a terrified Kerr. Then the cavalry arrives. Some day the dawn will come again.It's a rather mediocre war-time flag waver. It's not bad; it's just that it's not very polished. The plot, looked at as a whole, resembles the crab nebula of Orion. Britain to Poland to Britain to Norway to Britain to Norway to Britain.Williams is all right as the wisecracking reporter but Deborah Kerr, a truly fine actress, is miscast and undone by her make up. Kerr has a fragile beauty and a tremulous voice. She's always a little frightened in her later movies. (I like that in a woman.) But here she's barely recognizable as an earthy, stalwart Norwegian peasant. I mean it literally when I say "barely recognizable." Her fair hair is bound in curls that twist around each other like a loaf of challah. Her eyelids seem to have been darkened so much that they droop like an alcoholic's, and her lipstick is a glossy obsidian. She was only twenty-one but appears older and, in some scenes, a little debauched. She has one or two poignant moments, though. While exchanging small talk with Williams, awaiting execution in a darkened cell, she suddenly shudders, buries her face against his shoulder, and cries, "I'm AFRAID." So are we all, darling.The sequence in which Williams is parachuted into Norway is short but done with vigor.

I'm sure that the opening credits thank the "Royal N O R W E I G A N Government" - i.e. they misspell Norwegian.Is this some archaic spelling, is it a goof, or are my eyes playing tricks on me? (This was on the TV this afternoon so I couldn't rewind to check, sorry!)Otherwise I thought that the film was OK, for a bit of wartime propaganda. Not exactly in the league of In Which We Serve, and obviously not as "balanced" as post-war films such as "The Cruel Sea", but the performances were largely OK and the script not too "tally ho chaps". Some of the stock (?) footage and props were a bit flaky, but that's not surprising, there was a war on, you know...

The first five minutes of this film - set in a national newspaper office as Germany invades Poland - are superb. Unfortunately the rest of the film suffers in comparison and the most interesting character, played by a relatively young and buzzing Ralph Richardson, is killed off far too early. Otherwise it could have rivalled Q-Planes, another Richardson tour de force from a couple of years earlier. Williams is effective but slightly colourless in the lead although Deborah Kerr sparkles. The Rule Britannia v Horst Wessel scene in the bar echoes the more celebrated La Marseillaise v Watch on the Rhine song battle in Casablanca. I wonder which came first?