Customer Reviews

The North Star

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

After purchasing every available copy of this film on the market, please take my advise -- DO NOT BOTHER!

There is obviously no decent print of this film currently available. Being that it was originally produced by Samuel Goldwyn and released through United Artists, one might assume that MGM/UA Home Video might hold the original negatives (since they appear to have the rights to other Goldwyn films presently). The truth may be that no better version of this film exists, and that would be a damn shame given its historic significance and the place it held in Soviet/US relations at the time it was made.

But until MGM Home Video releases this title (IF they ever do), save your bucks and download it for free off of the Internet. The quality can't be any worse.

It is unfortunate when a classic is treated with such disregard and carelessness as this one has been.

The film quality is 'ok' but with some fuzzy scenes and a few missing frames and film burn here and there. The sound is of poor quality, dropping off to near silence at many points. To add insult to injury, my copy came complete with a manufacturing defect that stops the film short of it's conclusion.

All is not lost however... "Reel Enterprises" was kind enough to include a persistant watermark of it's logo in the lower right hand corner throughout the entire film. Otherwise I would have definitly thought this was a bootleg or Korean import.

A real shame for such an otherwise great film.

No menu, no extras, no frills but cheap at $10.00

North Star a fictional Soviet Village on the edge of the Polish/German Border. Life could not be more peaceful or serene for townspeople who are so happy that they often have occasion to break into song. And in this village all the songs are by Aaron Copland and Ira Gershwin. Far from being the "Evil Empire" of the Regan era, the villagers here are boisterous children, loving parents, devoted friends and neighbors. All of them get some opportunity to express how much they love each other and their nation. This bucolic bliss is rudely shattered when the German's begin their blitzkrieg invasion of the region in the Summer of 1941. The village bands together to fight off the tanks and planes of the enemy with horse cavalry and ingenuity. The only hope for the town to repel the invaders is a cache of arms and munitions being delivered by some local teenagers.

For its historical value this really is a must see movie. And if you can find it in the 2.99 bin at the video store, I would urge you to buy it and have a showing with all of the history buffs you know in attendance. Some of my favorite points are :
*The complete glossing over of the Soviet-German Non-Aggression pact or 1939
*The movie mentions that the Germans have occupied Poland but never makes mention of the fact that Russia immediately occupied the other half of Poland thus cutting the German's spoils in half.
* Officially the Soviet Union was a nation of atheists. The movie makers skirt around this potential fault by having some of the characters assume a praying type of posture (head down hands clasped together) as they silently work up the strength to make the needed sacrifices.

Other than as a period piece this movie has nothing to recommend it. The script is so flat that I recall once reading that Lillian Hellman tried unsuccessfully to have her name removed from the credits. The characters are wooden and lifeless manikins who mouth only patriotic platitudes. The songs would also stand a better chance if they too were more than just grist for the propaganda mill.

What is great is to see so many Hollywood stars doing there bit for the war effort. Ann Baxter, Dana Andrews, Walter Huston, Farley Granger, and Jane Winters (later to win fame as Josephine the Plumber) are all featured. They sing and dance and cavort around in regional costumes. In fact every effort is made to ensure that we are left with the opinion that except for the odds names and the quaint outfits, the kids of North Star are just like the kids back in the good old USA. A script like this one makes it very easy for me to believe that Dana Andrews and Farley Granger could be the boy next door !

Good cast, some well-orchestrated scenes, but a strange choice for to be made by the director of ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT and Lilian Hellman at her worst. The "happy singing peasants" as a chorus of saintly comrades is especially cloying. Look instead to two other very similar films (with some of the same cast members): DRAGON SEED and, especially, the far superior EDGE OF DARKNESS.

"The North Star" is a star studded 1943 war film produced by Sam Goldwyn for RKO and written by Lillian Hellman. It was part of Roosevelt's propaganda to promote his Russian allies who were taking the brunt of the war at the time the film was made. The focus of the film is the Ukraine resistance fighters.

The film stars Anne Baxter, Dana Andrews, Walter Huston, Walter Brennan, Dean Jagger, Farley Granger and Erich von Stroheim.

Anne Baxter had just completed a good supporting role opposite Joseph Cotton in Orson Welles' "The Magnificent Ambersons" (1942) when she got top billing for "North Star". After this she won the Oscar and the Golden Globe for "The Razor's Edge" (1946) and was nominated for an Oscar for her role as the ambitious Eve Harrington in "All About Eve" (1950). In 1956 she appeared as Queen Nefertiri in "The Ten Commandments" which is probably the peak of her career.

Dana Andrews appeared in over 100 films, including memorable roles in "The Westerner" (1941), "The Ox Bow Incident" (1943), "Laura" (1944) and "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946). He plays a young air force student

Walter Huston was churning out films in the 1930s, sometimes as many as 8 in a year. His performances were relatively undistinguished, even if some of the films (e.g., "Gabriel Over the White House") were hits. Huston got better as he got older, and he was nominated for an Oscar in 1937 ("Dodsworth") and 1942 ("Devil and Daniel Webster"). The same year this film came out he was nominated again ("Yankee Doodle Dandy") and won in 1949 for "Treasure of the Sierra Madre", just before he died in 1950. Huston plays the good Russian Dr. Kurin.

Walter Brennan won 3 Oscars for Best Supporting Actor ("Come and Get it" in 1936, "Kentucky" in 1938, and "The Westerner" in 1941) and was nominated for his work in "Sergeant York" (1941). We know him best for his Emmy nominated role in the TV series "The Real McCoys", and his film comedies ("The Over the Hill Gang") or as the grumpy side kick Stumpy in "Rio Bravo", but he was equally capable of playing the villain, as he showed in "The Westerner" (1940), "My Darling Clementine" (1946), and again In "How the West Was Won" (1962). Brennan plays Karp, a peasant, and he does such a great job that he is virtually unrecognizable, either physically or by listening for his voice.

Brennan and Huston had worked together in "Swamp Water" (1941) where Brennan got top billing. So the chance to shoot Brennan in this film was therapeutic for Huston. Interestingly enough Huston would go on to play a similar role in "The Dragon Seed" (1944), this time set in China.

Dean Jagger is best known for his TV role as Principal Vane in "Mr. Novak" for which he was twice nominated for an Emmy (1964, 1965), and for his Oscar winning role in "Twelve O'Clock High" (1949). He brought a grace and charm to his more than 100 roles including "Bad Day at Black Rock" (1955) and "Vanishing Point" (1971). Jagger plays a resistance leader.

Erich von Stroheim plays the evil German doctor. Von Stroheim was a famous German silent film director ("Greed", "The Merry Widow", "The Lost Squadron"), but he got into too many arguments when the talkie era started, and he turned to acting. He had plenty of experience playing the evil German soldier in the silent era ("The Hun Within", "The Heart of Humanity") so he transitioned easily into his role for this film. Von Stroheim is perhaps best remembered for his Oscar nominated role as the film director Max Von Mayerling in "Sunset Blvd" (1950).

This was Farley Granger's film debut. He had a busy, if undistinguished career, appearing in more than 50 films and for awhile, as a headliner. Some of his best work was done in Hitchcock's "Rope" (1948) and "Strangers on a Train" (1951).

Jane Withers plays Clavdia, a friend of Baxter. Withers is best known to us today as "Josephine the Plumber" from the commercials in the 60s and 70s, but she was, in fact, one of the most popular stars of the 30s and 40s.

Carl Benton Reid plays Andrews' father, one of the resistance leaders. Reid was a great character actor. He made a big splash in his first film opposite Bette Davis in "The Little Foxes" (1941) and went on to appear in more than 50 films before transitioning to TV where he continued to play many parts, often a loud mayor or a heavy in a western.

Martin Kosleck plays the incompetent German doctor. Kosleck was so adept at playing Nazis that he has the distinction of playing Hermann Goebbels more times than any other actor (5). A German born refugee from the Nazis, he played Goebbels for the first time in 1939 ("Confessions of a Nazi Spy").

The film was commercially and critically successful. It was nominated for 6 Oscars (Writing, Recording, Music, Cinematography, Special Effects, and Art Direction), and deservedly so. The film is beautifully shot with individual scenes that are of the same quality as GWTW. James Wong Howe received his fourth nomination for this film, and he would receive 5 more nominations and 2 wins ("Hud" and "The Rose Tatoo") in the future, making him one of the most acknowledged cinematographers in film history.

The music is inspirational throughout. Aaron Copeland received his third Oscar nomination for his work, and a few years later he would win for "The Heiress" (1949)

Lillian Hellman did the screenplay. This was her second Oscar nomination, having earned one in 1942 for "The Little Foxes" (in which Carl Benton Reid made his screen debut) which was adapted from her own play. Hellman's other plays include "The Children's Hour" (1934) and "Toys in the Attic" (1960). Hellman was fond of left wing causes, and her lover, famed author Dashiell Hammett was an avowed Communist Party member. Hammett and Hellman worked together on the screenplay "Watch on the Rhine" that starred Bette Davis and Paul Lukas.

Despite the accolades, by 1947, with the winds of war changing, the film was named "subversive" by the HUAC, and it was heavily edited to remove the scenes which showed Russian communal farm life (in the first 30 minutes of the film) as attractive. In fact, it was re-issued as "Armored Attack"

Leaving aside the political agenda, this is a great film with strong performances from a star studded cast, beautiful photography and music, and an excellent story line. The action sequences are well done and the special effects, for 1943, are exceptional.

Before the Second World War, Hollywood often took ambivalent looks at Stalin's Russia. However, when Josef Vissarionovich and FDR found themselves on the same side following Hitler's invasion of the USSR, Hollywood felt little compunction about presenting Russia through a glowing visage. In THE NORTH STAR, director Lewis Milestone spent no less than the first third of the film showing Your Typical Ukrainian Village as populated by happy, singing, dancing supporters of Moscow, which would later be revealed in real life as bitter irony when the West realized that Stalin would deliberately starve millions of Ukrainians merely to eliminate potential sources of discord. Some of Hollywood's biggest names of the era took part speaking midwestern English under Soviet names: Dana Andrews, Anne Baxter, Walter Brennan, and Dean Jagger. The happy lives of the villagers are disrupted forever when the first wave of Stuka dive bombers begin their strafing runs. Within hours of this aerial assault, the local commissars organize an armed resistance of partisans who take a common oath of never to surrender that must have reminded the audience of similar oaths taken by Washington's rag tag army at Valley Forge. Erich Von Stroheim is the monacled bad guy, the very personification of the educated "good" German who may have had mental reservations about genocide but had no problem with carrying out his orders to kill innocent children. Walter Hudson is the conscience of the community, a doctor who takes a terrible revenge on the Germans at the final reel.

NORTH STAR was clearly intended as a propaganda piece. It was necessary at the time to present Communism in a favorable light. NORTH STAR was so successful at this that a decade later, the House UnAmerican Activities Committee found it to be no less than a treasonous piece of celluloid commie trash. A butchered version called ARMORED ATTACK was released which omitted these offending scenes of Soviet heroism. As harshly as Milestone depicted the Nazis, the shattering reality of their utter determination to exterminate what the Nazis called "Unterermenschen" (sub humans) rendered Von Stroheim's bloodletting and arm breaking as relatively mild. NORTH STAR emerges as an entertaining early counterweight to RED DAWN, a film that exactly manages to reverse Milestone's moral compass. Not many films managed to present or even to try to present the Russians as the good guys. NORTH STAR succeeds in doing so.

I stumbled upon this movie written by Lillian Hellman- one of my favorites- and couldn't stop watching, probably for all the wrong reasons.

The plot is fine, but it portrays life under Stalin as pretty darn wonderful, and I imagine this is because it was made with the help of the good old US of A back when we were trying to bolster morale by portraying our allies as really good guys.

Needless to say, they weren't. And watching this story with the truth of the situation known gave it a haunting and kind of sad quality.

Also, this is one of the movies named as subversive by witnesses before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in October, 1947, which is even crazier.

Good performances by Dana Andrews et al, this is worth a look!

Samuel Goldwyn's THE NORTH STAR is a prestigiously mounted film about a small village in the Ukraine attacked by the Nazis during the Barbarossa campaign during WWII. The film demonstrates how the men and women of our ally Russia worked as a cohesive force to fight off the Germans. An impressive cast includes Dana Andrews, Anne Baxter, Dean Jagger, Farley Granger, Erich von Stroheim, Walter Huston, Walter Brennan and Jane Withers. The list of other filmmakers is also very impressive. They include director Lewis Milestone, screenwriter Lillian Hellman, legendary cinematographer James Wong Howe and distinguished composer Aaron Copland and producer William Cameron Menzies. That's quite a list. Aaron Copland, James Wong Howe and Lillian Hellman were all nominated for the Academy Award for their work on this film. This film puts the Russians in a good light as romantic combatants meeting the brutal and barbaric Germans in this skillfully constructed piece of propaganda. It is an interesting to see the American perception of the Soviets from this film made during WWII.

Here we have Walter Brennan and Dean Jagger leading an all star cast
in a movie telling how brave the Russian people are.
There were several of these early 40's war movies showing
our solidarity with the Russian against the Germans.
The same governments turned on each other just a short time further on.
In a time when the KGB has fallen we still have the CIA:
they are the same sort of beast as these governments
that tell us to love them one year and hate them the next?
There is a lesson here of history.

This movie fascinates for the same reason that "Triumph of the Will" or "Alexander Nevsky" fascinates -- because it shows us what WWII-era totalitarian propaganda looked like. What distinguishes this movie from the others, however, is that this one came from Hollywood, not from Stalin or Hitler.

The historian Robert Conquest said "The North Star" whitewashes Stalin's Russia even more dishonestly than Stalin's own film industry would have been capable of doing. No Soviet audience, after Stalin's forced starvations and mass murders, would have taken this movie's idyllic portrayal of Ukrainian life seriously.

The film shows the degree to which the Communist Party really did influence the American film industry in the 1940's. The writer, Lillian Hellman, was an avowed admirer of Stalin. She did her best to mislead Americans about the Stalin purges and show-trials of the 1930's; to keep America out of the war against Hitler during the two years when Stalin and Hitler were allies; and then to encourage America to enter the war when Stalin and Hitler became enemies.