The Day Will Dawn (1942)

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

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...

This movie is markedly more propagandist in tone than most movies made in the UK about the war while it was still in progress.It more closely resembles the overtly patriotic US pictures from the same era such as Guadalcanal Diary or Back To Bataan .It does not neglect to pay a merited tribute to the Norwegian people for their resistance either.Hugh Williams plays Colin Metcalfe ,a London journalist sent by his paper to Norway , soon to be conquered by the Nazis .He falls in love with Kari Alstead (Deborah Kerr)the daughter of a local fisherman(Finlay Currie).He returns to London after a short posting to Norway where he witnesses a Nazi submarine in operation .He is sent back to the country by Naval Intelligence to help the Royal Navy pinpoint the exact location of the U-Boat base from which crippling attacks are being launched on allied vessels .In the time he was away Kari has been forced to enter into an engagement with the Quisling police chief Gunther(Griffith Moore)in order to protect her father from arrest by the local Nazi chief (Francis L Sullivan).He is able to engineer a raid which is in turn followed by brutal Nazi repression The movie gives a good picture of life under the jackboot and is well acted -although for all her talent Deborah Kerr is not ideal casting as a Norwegian fisherwoman .Ralph Richardson impresses as a journalist and Roland Culver is good as Naval Intelligence man Rousing and patriotic, the movie ends with a typically robust Churchillian sentiment that still stirs the blood and it is good to see British cinema indulging in patriotism rather than restraint for once

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?