No 5 in TimeOut's 50 best WW2 movies
5. Went The Day Well? (1942)
Directed by Alberto Cavalcanti
Those Nazis picked the wrong sleepy village in this surprisingly tough English fantasy.
Those of us who grew up with much-missed national treasure Dame Thora Hird’s passive, grandmatronly demeanour sandwiched between every episode of ‘Countdown’ can only watch in amazement as, at the climax of Cavalcanti’s masterful wartime chiller, she gamely starts picking off invading Nazzies with a rusty old hunting rifle. The plot, in which Gerry parachutes into a sleepy English village and sets about clearing the way for a major invasion, may be fantasy, but it’s alarmingly powerful. Released well before the Normandy landings, ‘Went The Day Well?’ was made to remind all those bicycling bobbies, cheeky pub-dwelling chappies and self-satisfied lairds that they, too, may one day have to take on an entire paratroop division armed only with national pride and a malacca walking stick.
An extremely effective wartime thriller which transcends its propagandist impulse (about the need to look out for fifth columnists or Germans in disguise), thanks to a tremendous story base by Graham Greene and to Cavalcanti's firm direction. As a small, remote village is taken over and cut off by a platoon of undercover German paratroopers, tensions and suspicions mount, and confusion reigns as to how to deal with the problem. What really distinguishes the film is not so much the impressive exploration of the way the invasion threatens the accepted hierarchy within the village, but Cavalcanti's cool, brutal depiction of suddenly erupting violence and death; not only are British 'heroes' often despatched with shocking realism, but quiet, cosy housewives find themselves killing the enemy with almost hysterical relish. And any film that includes Thora Hird as a flighty seductress has to be worth watching
In summation, "Went The Day Well?" isn't a light piece. It hasn't a bevy of pretty girls strolling about, and it hasn't much fancy romancing. But it is a fine bit of picture making, cohesive, well filmed and directed.
All Comments