The North Star (1943 film)
Encyclopedia
The North Star is a 1943 war film
produced and distributed by RKO Radio Pictures. It was directed by Lewis Milestone
and written by Lillian Hellman
. The film starred Anne Baxter
, Dana Andrews
, Walter Huston
, Walter Brennan
and Erich von Stroheim
. The music was written by Aaron Copland
, the lyrics by Ira Gershwin
, and the cinematography was by James Wong Howe
. The film also marked the debut of Farley Granger
.
The film is about the resistance of Ukrainian villagers, through guerrilla tactics, against the German invaders of Ukraine
. The film was an unabashedly pro-Soviet
propaganda film
at the height of the war.
In the 1950s it was criticised for this reason and it was recut to remove the idealized portrayal of Soviet collective farms at the beginning and to include references to the 1956 Hungarian Uprising
.
for a holiday. To their horror they find themselves attacked by German aircraft, part of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Eventually their village itself is occupied by the Nazis. Meanwhile men and women take to the hills to form partisan militias. The full brutality of the Nazis is revealed when a German doctor (Erich von Stroheim) uses the village children as a source of blood for transfusions into wounded German soldiers. Some children lose so much blood that they die. A famous Russian doctor (Walter Huston) discovers this and informs the partisans, who prepare to strike back. They launch a cavalry assault on the village to rescue the children. The Russian doctor accuses the German doctor of being worse than the convinced Nazis, because he has used his skills to support them. He then shoots him. The peasants join together, and one girl envisions a future in which they will "make a free world for all men".
(1943
) and MGM's Song of Russia
(1944
). Similar U.S. World War II
movies are RKO Radio Pictures's Days of Glory on Russian resistance in the Tula Oblast
and MGM's Dragon Seed on Chinese efforts against the Japanese occupation.
The extent to which the film incorporated official Soviet propaganda about collective farms prompted British historian Robert Conquest
, a member of the British Foreign Office's Information Research Department
(a unit created for the purpose of combating communist influence and promoting anti-communist ideas) in the 1950s to later write "a travesty greater than could have been shown on Soviet screens to audiences used to lies, but experienced in [collective-farm conditions] to a degree requiring at least a minimum of restraint".
of 1956.
War film
War films are a film genre concerned with warfare, usually about naval, air or land battles, sometimes focusing instead on prisoners of war, covert operations, military training or other related subjects. At times war films focus on daily military or civilian life in wartime without depicting battles...
produced and distributed by RKO Radio Pictures. It was directed by Lewis Milestone
Lewis Milestone
Lewis Milestone was a Russian-American motion picture director. He is known for directing Two Arabian Knights and All Quiet on the Western Front , both of which received Academy Awards for Best Director...
and written by Lillian Hellman
Lillian Hellman
Lillian Florence "Lily" Hellman was an American playwright, linked throughout her life with many left-wing causes...
. The film starred Anne Baxter
Anne Baxter
Anne Baxter was an American actress known for her performances in films such as The Magnificent Ambersons , The Razor's Edge , All About Eve and The Ten Commandments .-Early life:...
, Dana Andrews
Dana Andrews
Dana Andrews was an American film actor. He was one of Hollywood's major stars of the 1940s, and continued acting, though generally in less prestigious roles, into the 1980s.-Early life:...
, Walter Huston
Walter Huston
Walter Thomas Huston was a Canadian-born American actor. He was the father of actor and director John Huston and the grandfather of actress Anjelica Huston and actor Danny Huston.-Life and career:...
, Walter Brennan
Walter Brennan
Walter Brennan was an American actor. Brennan won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor on three separate occasions, which is currently the record for most wins.-Early life:...
and Erich von Stroheim
Erich von Stroheim
Erich von Stroheim was an Austrian-born film star of the silent era, subsequently noted as an auteur for his directorial work.-Background:...
. The music was written by Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...
, the lyrics by Ira Gershwin
Ira Gershwin
Ira Gershwin was an American lyricist who collaborated with his younger brother, composer George Gershwin, to create some of the most memorable songs of the 20th century....
, and the cinematography was by James Wong Howe
James Wong Howe
James Wong Howe, A.S.C. was a Chinese American cinematographer who worked on over 130 films...
. The film also marked the debut of Farley Granger
Farley Granger
Farley Earle Granger was an American actor. In a career spanning several decades, he was perhaps best known for his two collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, Rope in 1948 and Strangers on a Train in 1951.-Early life:...
.
The film is about the resistance of Ukrainian villagers, through guerrilla tactics, against the German invaders of Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
. The film was an unabashedly pro-Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
propaganda film
Propaganda film
The term propaganda can be defined as the ability to produce and spread fertile messages that, once sown, will germinate in large human cultures.” However, in the 20th century, a “new” propaganda emerged, which revolved around political organizations and their need to communicate messages that...
at the height of the war.
In the 1950s it was criticised for this reason and it was recut to remove the idealized portrayal of Soviet collective farms at the beginning and to include references to the 1956 Hungarian Uprising
Hungarian Uprising
Hungarian Uprising can refer to:*Hungarian Revolution of 1848 *Hungarian Revolution of 1956...
.
Plot
In June 1941 Ukrainian villagers are living in peace. As the schools break up for vacation, a group of friends decide to travel to KievKiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
for a holiday. To their horror they find themselves attacked by German aircraft, part of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Eventually their village itself is occupied by the Nazis. Meanwhile men and women take to the hills to form partisan militias. The full brutality of the Nazis is revealed when a German doctor (Erich von Stroheim) uses the village children as a source of blood for transfusions into wounded German soldiers. Some children lose so much blood that they die. A famous Russian doctor (Walter Huston) discovers this and informs the partisans, who prepare to strike back. They launch a cavalry assault on the village to rescue the children. The Russian doctor accuses the German doctor of being worse than the convinced Nazis, because he has used his skills to support them. He then shoots him. The peasants join together, and one girl envisions a future in which they will "make a free world for all men".
Cast
- Anne BaxterAnne BaxterAnne Baxter was an American actress known for her performances in films such as The Magnificent Ambersons , The Razor's Edge , All About Eve and The Ten Commandments .-Early life:...
as Marina Pavlova - Dana AndrewsDana AndrewsDana Andrews was an American film actor. He was one of Hollywood's major stars of the 1940s, and continued acting, though generally in less prestigious roles, into the 1980s.-Early life:...
as Kolya Simonov - Walter HustonWalter HustonWalter Thomas Huston was a Canadian-born American actor. He was the father of actor and director John Huston and the grandfather of actress Anjelica Huston and actor Danny Huston.-Life and career:...
as Dr. Pavel Grigorich Kurin - Walter BrennanWalter BrennanWalter Brennan was an American actor. Brennan won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor on three separate occasions, which is currently the record for most wins.-Early life:...
as Karp - Ann HardingAnn HardingAnn Harding was an American theatre, motion picture, radio, and television actress.-Early years:Born Dorothy Walton Gatley at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, to George G. Gatley and Elizabeth "Bessie" Crabb. The daughter of a career army officer, she traveled often during her early life...
as Sophia Pavlova - Jane WithersJane WithersJane Withers is an American actress best known for being one of the most popular child film stars of the 1930s and early 1940s, as well as for her portrayal of "Josephine the Plumber" in a series of TV commercials for Comet cleanser in the 1960s and early 1970s.-Biography:Withers began her career...
as Clavdia Kurina - Farley GrangerFarley GrangerFarley Earle Granger was an American actor. In a career spanning several decades, he was perhaps best known for his two collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, Rope in 1948 and Strangers on a Train in 1951.-Early life:...
as Damian Simonov - Erich von StroheimErich von StroheimErich von Stroheim was an Austrian-born film star of the silent era, subsequently noted as an auteur for his directorial work.-Background:...
as Dr. von Harden - Dean JaggerDean JaggerDean Jagger was an Academy Award winning American film actor.-Career:Born Ira Dean Jagger in Columbus Grove, Ohio, Jagger made his film debut in The Woman from Hell with Mary Astor...
as Rodion Pavlov - Carl Benton ReidCarl Benton ReidCarl Benton Reid was an American actor. He achieved fame on the Broadway stage in 1939 as Oscar Hubbard, one of Regina Giddens's greedy, devious brothers in the play The Little Foxes, and made his film debut reprising his role opposite Bette Davis in the 1941 film version...
as Boris Stepanich Simonov - Ann CarterAnn CarterAnn Carter is a former American child actress, who worked with dozens of film stars, compiling an "unimaginably distinguished résumé" despite an acting career which "lasted only slightly more than a decade." She is best known for her starring role as Amy Reed in the 1944 film Curse of the Cat...
as Olga Pavlova - Esther DaleEsther DaleEsther Dale was an American actress, best known perhaps for her role as Aunt Genevieve in the 1935 Shirley Temple vehicle, Curly Top....
as Anna - Ruth Nelson as Nadya Simonova
Criticism
The House Committee on Un-American Activities would later cite The North Star as one of the three noted examples of pro-Soviet works made by Hollywood, the other two being Warner Brothers' Mission to MoscowMission to Moscow
Mission to Moscow is a book by the former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Joseph E. Davies published by Simon and Schuster in 1941. It was adapted into a film directed by Michael Curtiz in 1943....
(1943
1943 in film
The year 1943 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* January 3 - 1st missing persons telecast * February 20 - American film studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor films....
) and MGM's Song of Russia
Song of Russia
Song of Russia is a 1944 American war film made and distributed by MGM Studios. The picture was credited as being directed by Gregory Ratoff, though Ratoff collapsed near the end of the five-month production, and was replaced by László Benedek, who completed principal photography; the credited...
(1944
1944 in film
The year 1944 in film involved some significant events, including the wholesome, award-winning Going My Way plus popular murder mysteries such as Double Indemnity, Gaslight and Laura.-Events:*July 20 - Since You Went Away is released....
). Similar U.S. World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
movies are RKO Radio Pictures's Days of Glory on Russian resistance in the Tula Oblast
Tula Oblast
Tula Oblast is a federal subject of Russia with its present borders formed on September 26, 1937. Its administrative center is the city of Tula. The oblast has an area of and a population of 1,553,874...
and MGM's Dragon Seed on Chinese efforts against the Japanese occupation.
The extent to which the film incorporated official Soviet propaganda about collective farms prompted British historian Robert Conquest
Robert Conquest
George Robert Ackworth Conquest CMG is a British historian who became a well-known writer and researcher on the Soviet Union with the publication in 1968 of The Great Terror, an account of Stalin's purges of the 1930s...
, a member of the British Foreign Office's Information Research Department
Information Research Department
The Information Research Department, founded in 1948 by Christopher Mayhew MP, was a department of the British Foreign Office set up to counter Russian propaganda and infiltration, particularly amongst the western labour movement....
(a unit created for the purpose of combating communist influence and promoting anti-communist ideas) in the 1950s to later write "a travesty greater than could have been shown on Soviet screens to audiences used to lies, but experienced in [collective-farm conditions] to a degree requiring at least a minimum of restraint".
Recut
The film was rereleased in 1957 under the title of Armored Attack. This version starts with the entry of the German column into the town and ends with narration of Hungarians fighting the Red Army during the Hungarian UprisingHungarian Uprising
Hungarian Uprising can refer to:*Hungarian Revolution of 1848 *Hungarian Revolution of 1956...
of 1956.
Awards
The film was nominated for six Academy Awards:- Art Direction (Black-and-White) (Perry Ferguson, Howard Bristol)
- Cinematography (Black-and-White) (James Wong Howe)
- Music (Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture) (Aaron Copland)
- Sound Recording (Thomas T. MoultonThomas T. MoultonThomas T. Moulton was an American sound engineer. He won five Academy Awards in the category Sound Recording and was nominated for eleven more in the same category...
) - Special Effects (Clarence Slifer, R. O. Binger, Thomas T. Moulton)
- Writing (Original Screenplay) (Lillian Hellman)