"Went the Day Well?" 1942 DVD

 

Film Poster - 1942

This is the third time I have watched this British war film - adapted from a Graham Greene story in a 1940 magazine. It's told in flashback (very briefly at the start and at the end) by one of the villagers, who recounts the day a group of apparently bona fide British Royal Engineer soldiers arrive in Bramley End. They are welcomed at first, but suspicions are soon aroused (the use of the continental 7 and German chocolate) - rightly, as they are vanguard paratroopers preparing for a German invasion of Britain. The villagers are mainly rounded up and kept in the village church under guard.

Trapped in the Village Church

Attempts to alert the outside world prove at first to be failures: a message in a carton of eggs is destroyed by an incoming car; another note, put in the lady driver's pocket is used by her to stop the car window from rattling - it blows into the back seat where her dog chews it to bits! The postmistress, Mrs Collins (Muriel George) kills her German guard with an axe, tries to telephone for help, but gets shot by another German. Gruesome! The Home Guard, out on patrol is also gunned down, having failed to be warned? Why? The local squire is a long-time collaborator with the Germans and has managed to thwart much of the villagers' attempts to get help. However, a young boy does manage to escape, although shot in the leg, to raise the alarm.   British soldiers arrive and defeat the Germans. The treacherous squire is shot dead by the vicar's daughter (her father had been killed trying to ring the church bell for help). The gallant Mrs Fraser saves the children in her care by grabbing a grenade, thrown into the house, at the cost of her own life.

In some ways, a rather mundane event in a single day. By the time the film was premiered, the threat of a German invasion had passed, so it may have lost its main impact (Greene's story in 1940 would have been much more true to those grim days). The acting was pretty standard British fare of the time, with some well-known 'character' actors popping up. I did not think much of Leslie Banks' portrayal of the village squire; it was almost as if he didn't want to be in the film, or wasn't keen on playing a traitor. Then I read that, whilst serving the Great War with the Essex Regiment, he had sustained injuries that left his face partially scarred and paralysed. In his acting career, he would use his injury to good effect - showing the unblemished side when playing comedy or romance and the scarred, paralysed side of his face when playing drama or tragedy. That explains much of his 'passive', unemotional behaviour. He died in 1952, a decade later, from a stroke he suffered whilst out walking.

The film is good, straightforward and rather 'homely' propaganda. Moreover, one is taught not to mess with a gun-toting Thora Hurd!

Went the day well? We died and never knew. But, well or ill, freedom, we died for you.