| The North Star | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Lewis Milestone |
| Produced by | Samuel Goldwyn William Cameron Menzies (exec.) |
| Written by | Lillian Hellman (story and screenplay) |
| Starring | Anne Baxter Dana Andrews Walter Huston Walter Brennan Erich von Stroheim |
| Music by | Aaron Copland |
| Cinematography | James Wong Howe |
| Distributed by | RKO Radio Pictures |
| Release date(s) | 4 November 1943 |
| Running time | 108 minutes |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
The North Star (also known as Armored Attack in the US) 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 the "heroic" villagers, through guerrilla tactics, against the evil German invaders of the Ukraine. Though the picture was a major studio release, it was an unabashedly pro-Soviet propaganda film. 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's Days of Glory on Russian resistance in the Tula Oblast and MGM's Dragon Seed on Chinese efforts against the Japanese occupation.
Criticism
This movie is so filled with official Soviet propaganda about collective farms that British historian Robert Conquest called it, "a travesty greater than could have been shown on Soviet screens to audiences used to lies, but experienced in this particular matter [collective farm conditions] to a degree requiring at least a minimum of restraint."[1] In fact, because of the genocide committed by Stalin in the Ukraine in 1931-32, with a minimum of 5 million murdered,[1] the Wehrmacht were at first greeted as liberators by Ukrainians before the Nazis' own crimes against humanity turned the population against them.
References
- ^ a b The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine, Conquest, page 321, Oxford Press, 1986; see Chapter 17 for detailed information on the efforts of pro-Soviet Westerns to help the regime cover up the true conditions on the collective farms.
