WENT THE DAY WELL?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 243, 18 February 1944, Page 18

WENT THE DAY WELL?

(B EF )

HERE seems to be a lot of. argument about this film. Before I saw it I was given the impression by one friend, an Englishman, that Britain might

just as well now give up making films because nothing better than this could possibly ever be produced. And then I met somebody else who said it was so bad that both the film and its director should be publicly burned and _ their ashes scattered to the winds. Well, I saw it for myself, and I’m in favour neither of canonising the director (Cavalcanti) nor of consuming him by fire. Indeed, I can’t quite see what all the fuss is about. Went the Day Well? strikes me as a good, workmanlike thriller, with better-than-average acting and atmosphere, but scarcely to be compared, except unfavourably, with The Next of Kin (i.e., Mr. Davis), which was produced by the same studio and which was just as exciting but had all the conviction and authenticity that the new film notably lacks. Its chief virtue to my mind is the composite picture of English village life which is built up (though that was comedy and this is melodrama, there is the same sort of intimate, semi-documen-tary touch as you got in Quiet Wedding). But basically, this tale of how Bramley End kept its end up agairist a battalion of Nazi paratroops disguised as British soldiers is just the old Cowboys ’n Injuns stuff in battledress. And since they all wear the same battledress it is rather difficult in the finale to’ tell which are Cowboys and which Injuns. There is also the debatable point about the quality and extent of the bloodshed; but since this topic was pretty well exhausted in the controversy over Commandos Strike at Dawn, Y’ll content myself with quoting from C. A. Lejeune’s review of the new picture: "Any display of hate, except in the hands of an expert director and artist, is to be avoided, since high passions without high performance are less likely to lead to conviction than laughter."