three rows back

This is my latest contribution to The Big Picture, the visually focused film magazine that proves there’s more to film than meets the eye. The Big Picture is kicking off 2016 with a series of features and reviews with the theme of ‘war’ (fun, I know). This piece is part of the site’s Lost Classics section (featuring in my list of Great Films You Need To See), and covers Alberto Cavalcanti’s superb 1942 wartime drama Went The Day Well?

Went The Day Well? remains a brilliantly imaginative and disturbing wartime ‘what if’

Propaganda films exist to sell a varnished version of real events, which makes it even more remarkable a movie made at a time when the outcome of World Ward Two was far from certain would so boldly write the epitaph for Hitler’s Third Reich.

Adapted from Graham Greene’s magazine story, Alberto Cavalcanti’s 1942 classic Went The Day Well? regales supposedly contemporaneous events from a point in the future (not too distant audiences presumably hoped) when the war was over and the Allies stood victorious.

Cherry villager (Mervyn Johns) shows us “the only bit of England the Germans got” in Went The Day Well?

In spite of the happy ending, it must have nevertheless been discomforting for audiences to be told by a cheery pipe-smoking villager (played by Mervyn Johns) that the so-called Battle of Bramley End had been kept a state secret until after the war was over – a battle for the very heart of England where the front line is a sleepy country village; not too dissimilar to the sort of quaint idyll many people would have returned home to after stepping out of the cinema.

Went The Day Well? enacts the nightmare scenario Brits would have feared at the time; namely a German invasion of Britain under the noses of honest, hard-working folk. What makes the film even more unnerving is that the fifth column of Nazi soldiers who arrive en masse in Bramley End largely speak with cut-glass English accents and ingratiate themselves into this small community with considerable ease.

The dastardly Germans hatch their plot in Went The Day Well?

It transpires they’ve had help from at least one Nazi sympathiser on the inside, revealing an ugly truth that has hidden in plain sight, and the deviousness of their plan – Bramley End is the beachhead where the English way of life can be destroyed from within – is staged in brutal, thuggish fashion when they reveal their true intentions during a church service (a none-too-subtle implication that the Nazis are a godless lot).

Cavalcanti does away with dramatic flourish and instead films events with a documentarian’s gaze. That said, there are several pointed moments, not least of which a brief shot of Basil Sydney’s Kommandant Orlter consulting his mission plans next to a plaque honouring the fallen dead of World War One.

Postmistress Mrs Collins (Muriel George) turns ax murderer in Went The Day Well?

The villagers’ eventual fight back is still startling and must have stirred in audiences of the time an odd mix of revenge fantasy and queasiness at the bloodthirsty nature of what they were watching. Postmistress Mrs Collins’ (Muriel George) use of an axe to kill a gruff-sounding Nazi is tempered by the tear-stained shock etched on her face when the gravity of the deed starts to set in, while the look of joyous satisfaction a villager gives to shooting a German invader augurs the action man movies of the 1980s and beyond.

Even Thora Hird gets in on the act in her first starring role as a gun-toting Bramley Ender who makes the Nazis wish they’d picked another quiet strip of England to invade.

That got ’em! Shooting Germans in Went The Day Well?

One can perhaps forgive some of the more circumspect dialogue bearing in mind the time in which it was released, although the response a young Harry Fowler gives when asked “do you know what morale is?” – “yeah, it’s what the wops ain’t got!”- is difficult to defend.

Went The Day Well? remains a brilliantly imaginative and disturbing wartime ‘what if’ that no doubt sent a stark warning to ol’ Adolf – you mess with Little Britain at your peril.

You may have noticed I have been somewhat quiet of late when it comes to blogging, whether that be posting reviews or commenting on the splendid work of my fellow bloggers.

I’ve not disappeared rest assured, but have spent the past week or so moving house and will be travelling to chilly Iceland next week for a few days of sub-zero sight-seeing.

I’ve also been unable to get access to Wi-Fi whilst the house move has been ongoing, which has meant I’ve not been able to get online very much.

Excuses aside, I aim to be back online in a week or so, but in the meantime I wanted to wish everyone a belated Happy New Year. See you soon blogging community!