The North Star (1943) The last time we covered a film as culturally and politically weird as this one was back on 2/5/17, when we posted on Warner Brothers' mid-World War 2 pro-Russia propaganda epic, "Mission To Moscow".....(also released in 1943....)
The backstory of how these two movies came to be is virtually identical. The raging battle against Hitler and his vile Nazi hordes made for strange bedfellows......and none was more stranger than our alliance with communist Russia, ruled with a bloody iron fist by Joseph Stalin.
In this brief, heat-of-battle atmosphere, Hollywood. at the request of Prez FDR, stepped up to produce a few rah-rah 'Yay Russia!' feature films.......and Hollywood the Dream Factory, did what it does best - spin a fantasy, romanticized depiction of our ally Russia as something resembling a mythical, happy paradise populated by robust cheerful peasants. These films turned Russia into a NeverNever Land, agrarian Oz that only lacked a yellow brick road.
As ridiculous as 'Mission To Moscow' was, it's fairly sedate in comparison to the sheer, off-the-rails craziness of "The North Star" which features Ukrainian farmers stepping up to kick Nazi ass when the fascist goons overrun their little village. But first......they sing and dance!
Before any hostilities commence, the film spends its first half hour presenting the town as a Russian Brigadoon, complete with songs and a lengthy, show-stopping dance number for all the villagers. We could only watch with mouth agape as this gang would burst into merry, jubilant song at any given moment. (The score and the songs, by the way, came from, believe or not, master composer Aaron Copland and lyricist Ira Gershwin.)
It takes a sky full of Nazi warplanes to finally wipe the smiles and non-stop singing off their faces, now having to devote their time to dodging bombs and strafing barrages.
When the odious Nazi ground contingent rolls into the formerly festive village, they come fully staffed with not one, but two evil surgeons (the immortal bullet-headed Erich Von Stroheim and ultra creepy Martin Kosleck) Though Von Stroheim expresses a few qualms, the duo immediately go about their business - draining blood out of the village children to transfuse to their own wounded soldiers.
So these guys aren't just garden variety Nazis, they're literal vampires sucking the life out of little kids.......but serious payback comes roaring right back at them once the villagers get their hands on load of guns.
In true glorious Hollywood fashion, the hardy Russians lead a clever guerilla assault that reigns hellfire on the occupying Germans and follow it up with a Wild West horseback charge. The once gentle, kindly village doctor (Walter Huston, also the star of "Mission To Moscow") strides calmly through the carnage to deliver unforgiving vengeance on those two Nazi doctors.....but not before lecturing the slightly conflicted Von Stroheim on his especially terrible complicity in Nazi atrocities.....
Through all this accumulated madness, Aaron Copland's grandiose, bombastic score whips itself into a fervor very similar to Sergei Prokofiev's classic music for Russia's own homegrown patriotic epic 'Alexander Nevsky'.
Naturally, after World War 2 ended and the Soviet Union began its insidious quest for world domination, everyone involved in "The North Star" and "Mission To Moscow" found themselves in the crosshairs of HUAC, the House On Un-American Activities. (With the 'Red Scare' well underway, HUAC took a dim view of anybody or anything that celebrated Russia, even if it dated back to when the Russkies were battling the Nazis along with us......)
In the interest of putting this once-in-a-lifetime sort of movie in historical perspective we'll once again apply the same double rating system we used with "Mission To Moscow". As a fascinating piece of cinema history.....3 stars (***).......but purely on its merits at a movie, it's a 1 star (*) lunatic embarrassment, unintentionally painful and bizarre in its dedication to fictitious spin.
Just before the fadeout, Anne Baxter, playing one of the surviving villagers, declares, "We'll make this the last war.....we'll make a free world for all men....."......uh....yeah.....right. Whatever you say........
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