Customer Reviews

Days of Glory [VHS]

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Here's a film that no decent Gregory Peck fan should be without. Perhaps this is why the video is OUT OF STOCK?? Or perhaps the subject matter - The Great Patriotic War - is unpopular in these days of glory in occupied Iraq? The things that strike me about this film, apart from Peck's rawboned, wide-eyed performance (yes, his VERY FIRST) are the deep B&W photography and the treatment of children in the movie.... it's as though much of the story is seen through their eyes. Indeed, "Enemy at the Gates" owes a plotline to "Days of Glory". In fact, I am gonna go ahead and put this on my list of grand all-time war movies 'about' children, right up there with Boorman's "Hope and Glory" (similarity intentional, Bro. John?); "Come and See"; "Empire of the Sun"; "The North Star"; "Back to Bataan"; and of course "Mrs. Miniver". Perhaps YOU can add others?

The year was 1944. Screenwriter and producer Casey Robinson wanted to chronicle the harrowing and valiant resistance of the Russian people against the Nazi military machine that invaded their homeland in 1941. To give the film a look of realism Robinson went outside Hollywood to find fresh young faces for the leads. He cast New York theatre actor Gregory Peck and ballerina Tamara Toumanova to star. Robinson got Jacques Tourneur to director based on his imaginative work (CAT PEOPLE) for producer Val Lewton. There are some good action sequences but the film is weighed down by Robinson's own script that is full of long stretches of dialogue and many romantic interludes which detracts from the intended theme of the film. The film's greatest assets are Gregory Peck's performance as Vladimir the leader of the Russian resistance and Academy Award Nominated Special Effects by Vernon L. Walker.

This is a propaganda movie made to illustrate our alliance with Soviet Russia during WWII. There is a mixture of Soviet actors and US actors. The plot is simple - show the poor Bolshevist resisting the Nazi onslaught with bravery. Peck showed his ability to deliver dialog and display body language that advances the plot. The sets were simple, yet effective. Compare the movie Defiance with this movie if you want to see how far the movie industry has come. They both have a similar plot!

I was entertained by this movie. I liked Defiance too!

There is no real conflict between the characters. It is propaganda, showing how valiant the Russians were. But they were not. The ending made me feel indifferent. It is a plot-theme about a woman (Toumavona) who wants to fit in with her comrades. She is shunned at first. Later she is accepted and recites the oath of acceptance. She just wants to belong.

They needed a ballerina from the Ballets Russes for this role to dupe people about the real message in this movie. And to think that her family escaped Russia during the revolution, and did not return to Russia after the revolution (although she may have in her later years).

This propaganda movie was made in Hollywood by communistic sympathizers, glorifing Russians, Russians who were unable to feed their own people, who murdered their own people. This movie has a dreadful plot, a woman who wants to belong (why I don't know). The movie is a choice between fascim and communism, between the Germans and the Russians, a false alternative. I never liked Gregory Peck. Now I can see why. He promoted communism, and he visited Cuba for a film festival. Give me Gary Copper any time, or even Robert Taylor, two actors who openly opposed communism.

The heroine wants to conform and belong to the group of good little communists. We are supposed to be exactly like her. That is what the writer wants you to become, a conformist, such a dreadful idea to sell to me, an American individual.

The voice over at the end of the movie claims that the guerrilla fighting was the cause of victory, a blatant lie. The American forces were the victors of both the first and second world wars. The French had many years of guerrilla warfare but were still unable to remove the Germans from French soils. It was the Americans army that finally liberated France.

Had the real motive been to show the virtues of guerrilla fighters, then the movie should have been about the American revolutionary fighters, about General Washington, but not about a group of Russian peasants starving in a country that murdered the most intelligent, free thinkers. "I want to belong," says the heroine in different ways; words pathetically uttered from the mouth of a woman who was saved because her family fled Russia.
To add a bit of love, add some poetry from Pushkin, a ballerina, and a leading man, and then the audience become boobies.

If we wish to be accurate about the war between Russia and Germany, Hitler made the same mistake as Napoleon, he sent his army there during the Russian winter. The real cause of victory for the Russians was winter.

-10 would be more appropriate rating.