Film Review: The North Star (1943)

There are many Hollywood films made obscure for the simple reason of their authors being too embarrassed with or for some reasons wishing that they have never been made. Sometimes the source of that embarrassment has actually little to do with the quality of the film itself or anything with its makers. One of such examples can be found in The North Star, 1943 war drama directed by Lewis Milestone.

The film is set in North Star, fictional collective farm (kolhoz) in Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The plot begins on June 20th 1941, during the last day of school. Following the festivities, group of young villagers head to Kiev where they are about to enrol in university. However, on June 22nd 1941 Nazi Germany launches invasion of Soviet Union and North Star gets bombed and strafed by Luftwaffe, causing major loss of life and injuries. Kolhoz authorities gather all able-bodied men who would head to hills and resist invaders as partisans, while the rest is ordered to burn the village down in order to prevent enemy from using it. German motorised columns arrive in the village and set up hospital, where it soon becomes apparent that German military doctors forcefully take blood from children in order to use it for transfusion. When they learn about it, partisans stage desperate raid in order to free children.

The North Star was made during Second World War. US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt has recruited Hollywood for war propaganda efforts which also included series of films that were promote American allies and praise their patriotism and sacrifices as inspiration for American themselves. Soviet Union was among those allies and the task in this particular case was taken by Samuel Goldwyn Company. The North Star received pretty large budgets for 1940s standards, but also quite impressive collection of talent. Script was written by renowned playwright Lillian Hellman, cinematography was provided by Oscar laureate James Wong Howe, soundtrack was composed by Aaron Copland, the most prominent American composers of its time, while Ira Gershwin wrote songs. The North Star was an ensemble piece and it lacked proper stars, but the cast was nevertheless impressive. It included Oscar-winning character actor Walter Huston as village physician Dr. Kurin, another Oscar-winning character actor Walter Brennan and elderly villager Karp and iconic Erich Stroheim in the role of Doctor von Haden, cynical German military physician. Among younger actors future Oscar-winning actress Anne Baxter played Marina Pavlova, daughter of kolhoz director (played by Dean Jagger), Dana Andrews played Soviet Air Force pilot Kolya Simonov and Fairley Granger, future star of Hitchcock films, had his first major role as Marina’s love interest Damian Simonov. Film was directed by Lewis Milestone, veteran best known for his 1930 war classic All Quiet on the Western Front.

Despite all those talent, The North Star turned out to be major disappointment. While it is tempting to point towards crude pro-Soviet propaganda as the main reason (together with Hellman’s alleged Communist sympathies), the real problem of this film is conceptual. It starts as depiction of pastoral, almost idyllic life at the collective farm which is accompanied with dance and song numbers. Some of those songs are good, like patriotic anthem “Wide Is My Motherland” (“borrowed” from 1936 Soviet musical comedy Circus, but other as dreadful. For the first half The North Star plays out like musical comedy, and not particularly original or inspired one (much inferior to their 1930s Soviet counterparts). Things get serious around half when the war starts, including some of the disturbing scenes of innocent children being among victims of German bombing. Depiction of German occupation, which includes deliberate torture of women and vampiric treatment of children, also looks like rather crude propaganda although the real atrocities committed by Nazis at the time were much worse and probably beyond screenwriter’s imagination. Lewis Milestone, who had reconstructed one world war so well in All Quiet on Western Front, does another world war much worse in North Star. There are scenes drenched in bathos, like Kolya using his damaged plane to kamikaze-style destroy German armoured column or rather chaotic night combat. Milestone partially aquits himself with well-directed final showdown between Partisans and Germans in the village, but it happens too late to generally improve impression.

The North Star, despite that, received good reviews and six Oscar nominations, although the results at box office weren’t particularly impressive. After the war, when the alliance between USA and Soviet Union gave way to Cold War, its pro-Soviet stance became source of embarrassment for anyone involved. During McCarthy era, House Un-American Activities Committee named it as proof of Communist influence in Hollywood and this served as justification for purges and blacklists. In 1957 Samuel Goldwyn Company tried to salvage its reputation by cutting film in a way that removed all references to Soviet Union and instead added contemporary stock footage and narration praising 1956 Hungarian Uprising in order to portray Soviets and tyrannical villains. This version, known under title Armored Attack, which had replaced one sort of propaganda with another, was for many years the only available. Nowadays, audience can look The North Star mostly as curiosity, but also as a depressive reminder that some things haven’t changed much in eighty years and that we still have to deal with destructive wars, as well as Hollywood machine that justify them.

RATING: 4/10 (+)

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