Popular reviews

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  Review by 𝕭laze the 𝓐ction 𝕵unkie ★½

  Allied war propaganda flick, or 'unashamed pro-soviet propaganda at the height of world war 2' according to Wikipedia. The major plot here is that Nazi Germany invades Russia to kill all the children. I'm not defending Nazis, their very real atrocities made them the heartless villains that we feel no remorse for today. It's just easy to see how over the top evil they were made in these war-time flicks. Which honestly if I think about it, while this film does portray what I think is over the top, it does seem in line with Nazi atrocities. Does that make this a good or bad film? It was quite drawn out, and took forever to make points at times. It…

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  Review by maneleeo ★★½

  The thing about this films is tat is a product of the time, what the american people needed during wartime. The thing about such film is that it has little interest on being accurate or creating a cinematic experience that is nothing else other than giving hope to the people. That is, undoubtedly, terribly important, as cinema can be used as an important tool of propaganda. The propaganda in this case is to tell that the Nazi threat can be destroyed, a small ukrainian village can take on the Nazi army, why can't The U.S.A. do the same?

  However, the thing about such films is that they can feel hollow and devoided of interest. Walter Huston, Dana Andrews (I prefer…

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  Review by ScreeningNotes ★★

  Maybe something about loss of innocence, or the abruptness with which evil disrupts normalcy? It's kinda the opposite of the banality of evil: everyone is perfectly happy living their banal, everyday lives until pure evil interrupts them. The first act has exactly that kind of too-lighthearted, too-carefree attitude that in other contexts is an obvious signal that a character is going to die in the next scene, with a bunch of youths literally singing ♪ "we're the younger generation and the future of the nation!" ♪ as if the filmmakers are trying to win a competition for the most heavy-handed theming of all time, and right when we roll into act 2 the Nazi bombs start falling. This sharp contrast…

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  Review by PUNQ ★★

  The film did a good job of familiarizing us with the family and their travels, but the plot and climax was cardboard propaganda and took away from the impact. Just poorly executed key scenes and kind of cringy all over, especially the attempts of joyful music.

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  Review by Amy Voorhees Searles ★★★

  You know how THE SOUND OF MUSIC is about 95% carefree singing and dancing and 5% fleeing from Nazis? Well THE NORTH STAR is 5% carefree singing and dancing and 95% war atrocities, which is probably why I preferred the latter.

  It's really wild to see a Hollywood movie that so glamorizes the citizenry of the Soviet Union. Our countries have been ideological rivals for so long, a movie like this doesn't seem possible. But I suppose this was made in the "sweet spot" when we were still Allies, and the Cold War was just a twinkle in a Siberian icicle.

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  Review by idgey ★★★

  This is SO not what I thought I was going to watch. Allow me to provide you with the description from my cable company. "In a small, quiet Ukrainian village, five young friends are released for their summer break from school, so they set out on a walking trip to Kiev." I thought this was going to be a fluffy summer romance type of story (look at the poster!) and then all the sudden we've got Nazis blowing stuff to bits. So I looked it up and this is indeed a propaganda and pro-resistance film. And while a village in Ukraine being Rah-Rah Soviets is not a good idea and definitely has NOT held up well, I'm up for anything…

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  Review by cal 𝜗𝜚 ★★★

  dear lord farley granger is so babygirl here.
  i’m going to cry

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  Review by LeeJK56 ★★★

  General War Film #17 (War) (WW II)
  Part of My Recently Seen Movies By Theme List

  "After we win this war, and we will win it, perhaps this will be the last war. We will create a free world for those who are truly free."

  This 1943 RKO film is set in the Summer of 1941, at the onset of the Nazi invasion of Russia. It takes place in or near a small village that would now be part of Ukraine. The film shows village life before the onset of the German invasion and the happy life the villagers participate in. As the Germans advance and take control of the village, the locals organize resistance and fight back.

  I truly…

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  Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★

  I stayed much of the first half imagining Lewis Milestone and Lilliam Hellman watching 30s Soviet films set in small villages by people like Dozvhenko and Barnet and trying to come up with a reasonable Hollywood fac-smile. It is of course all very bland helped some by a fine cast.It is still very weird to see this kind of pean for collectivism in an American movie. When the nazi arrives things shift,. more tension build and the film more clearly rressembles straightfoward WWII propaganda. Von Stroheim is around as the German doctor who is "just following orders" and Hellman puts together some solid rethorical discussions for him and Walter Huston as the Soviet doctor (1943 was quite the year for…

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  Review by Jon ★★

  "The film is about the resistance of Ukrainian villagers, through guerrilla tactics, against the German invaders of the Ukrainian SSR. The film was an unabashedly pro-Soviet propaganda film at the height of the war.
  In the 1950s it was criticized for this reason and it was re-cut to remove the idealized portrayal of Soviet collective farms at the beginning..."

  "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 Moscow (1943) and MGM's Song of Russia (1944). Similar U.S. World War II movies are RKO Radio Pictures' Days of Glory (1944) on Russian resistance in the Tula Oblast and MGM's Dragon Seed (1944) on on Chinese efforts against the Japanese occupation."

  "Although suspected of having communist leanings, Milestone was never called to testify before the HUAC, and he was never officially blacklisted."

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  Review by Lowbacca ★★★

  The movie looks good and sounds good, but I feel like it spreads itself a bit thin, with a long introduction and some singing before it eventually gets into a much grittier reality of war and its brutalities (and particularly, the brutalities of the Nazis). When it does that, there's a lot of broad strokes in here that make for great propaganda a bout the heroism of fighting the Nazis, but aren't particularly compelling beyond that.

  The strongest plot element that I wish had more attention was that between the local doctor and the German doctors, particularly making the distinction between those who were true believers of the Nazi cause and those that went along with it, often with things…

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  Review by Charles Pedskalny ★★½

  One of the oddest propaganda films ever made, maybe. There were two, I think, other completely pro-Soviet films made in Hollywood during that very small time in the war when we were all pals with the commies. Small in the sense of getting a script approved to filming to releasing.

  The first near half of this film is hard to watch, though, so much singing, joy, happiness, all the while we the viewer know it's all going to come crashing down. The filmmakers insistence of showing this idyllic communal utopian existence in such earthy ways makes me wonder if some of them had seen some of the Soviet flicks of the past (Earth came to mind). Ridiculous of course due…