Went The Day Well? Review

• 12th Jul 2011

Made in 1942, Went the Day Well? was made as a blatant propaganda film and is often considered the first of Ealing Studios ‘classic’ films. It is re-released here by Optimum in their ongoing re-releases of the studios films with an attractive poster on the cover (as with most of the other releases) and is available in both DVD and Blu-ray formats. The film was directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, a Brazilian who had come from a documentary filmmaking background, the scenario is based off a short story written by Graham Greene in 1940, this is a wartime set story of a German parachute regiment disguised as British soldiers deployed as an advance force behind enemy lines before the main German invasion force in the peaceful fictitious village of Bramley End. After a while the suspicions of the locals are aroused due to a variety of things such as the behaviour of the soldiers, a soldier writing numbers in the European style and a boy being offered schockolade by one of the soldiers. The Germans are then forced to take the locals hostage in the church and kill off a couple of rebels such as the vicar and the home guard unit. Soon the simple people of Bramley End are forced to take matters into their own hands, dissuading Hitler from invading Britain. At the outbreak of the war Greene was working for the Ministry of Information and as a result much of this is written as a “what if scenario…?” The English countryside is painted as a Utopian Albion filled with English types from the poacher to the vicar. The village itself is archetypal: the church is the centre of the community, there is a local manor house (run by a squire who happens to be a Fifth Columnist working for the Germans), a post office and rows of cottages (the location work was filmed in Oxfordshire). However, in the end, Orwell had nothing to do with the film. If the story of Went the Day Well? seems familiar that’s because in 1977 the novel that became the 1977 film, The Eagle Has Landed was released.

Of course this is a propaganda film and we witness here how the little Englanders become resourceful when in peril and show the not untypical xenophobic and racist remarks given to both the Germans and the Italians. The prologue to the film is set in the ‘future’ in which a farmer speaks of how prophetically before Hitler came to his deserved end his invasion plans were thwarted by the people of this little village – the clear propaganda message that everyone can do their part when called upon. The final shootout in the churchyard and the manor grounds is exciting and well staged and the dialogue gives the impression of the defiant “stiff upper lip” of the English. Some of the violence contained in the film is chillingly effective and would have aroused passion by its contemporary audience, not least of all when an old lady throws pepper into the eyes of one of the Germans and proceeds to bludgeon him with an axe.

On its release the film was well received, despite the fact that an invasion from the Germans had long ceased to be a threat since 1941 and despite its clear propaganda message, elements stands up today an entertaining if slightly ‘Boys Own’ wartime propaganda movie.

Chris Hick