Went the Day Well? (1942)
Directed by Alberto Cavalcanti

Film Review

Graham Greene's short story The Lieutenant Died Last was the inspiration for this effective wartime propaganda film which presented contemporary audiences with the ultimate nightmare scenario: what would happen if the Nazis walked into your back yard?  The film was directed by the Brazilian born filmmaker Alberto Cavalcanti during his stint at Ealing Studios.   Cavalcanti began his career by working as an assistant to the avant garde French film director Marcel L'herbier, before moving to the GPO film unit in London, where he made some notable documentaries, including Coal Face (1935).

Went the Day Well? was the high point of Cavalcanti's time at Ealing.   The film may not be perfect (the editing is clunky and some of the film's humour sits ill alongside some of its darker moments) but it provides a valuable insight into the psychology of the British at a time when the possibility of a Nazi invasion was a very serious prospect.   Naturally the film goes out of its way to portray the Germans as baby skewering fiends  with forked tongues, and it takes some stretch of the imagination to believe that Nazis could pass themselves off as British soldiers so easily.  Otherwise, however, the characters are generally true to life and convincingly portrayed by a very talented cast.  Leslie Banks makes a deliciously loathsome quisling whilst the colourful thesps playing the courageous villagers (including a young and gutsy Thora Hird) easily win our sympathies in their seemingly doomed attempts to defeat the Nazi invaders.

Like pretty well all propaganda pieces, Went the Day Well? is shamelessly manipulative and includes several sequences which were clearly intended to shock an audience out of its collective complacency.  (As it turned out, the film's impact was greatly diminished as it was released some months after Hitler's invasion of England had been decisively thwarted).   Even today, it is a gruelling experience to watch the sequence in which a party of home guard troops are ambushed and systematically slaughtered by German soldiers.  Just as shocking is the scene in which the seemingly harmless postmistress slices up her billeted soldier with an axe before being mercilessly bayoneted.  Characters that we grow to like are felled without fanfare or reflection; anonymous soldiers are butchered, their lives seemingly decided by a throw of the dice.  It is this sobering understatement of wartime experience which gives the film its stark realism and impact, making it not just a classic of its kind but also one of finest films to come out of Ealing Studios.

Film Synopsis

One day in May 1942 a British Army convoy rolls into the sleepy English village of Bramley End.  The commander, Major Hammond, explains to the startled villagers that his platoon is making a review of local defences in readiness for a possible Nazi invasion.  The villagers, glad to do their bit for the war effort, agree to billet the soldiers in their homes.  But all is not what it seems.  The soldiers are in fact German troops in disguise, the spearhead for an imminent invasion.  With the help of the local squire, Oliver Wiltsford, a fifth columnist, they are tasked with neutralising the defences and communications in the area.  When the villagers discover the truth, the soldiers abandon their charade and take them prisoner, warning them that they will be executed if they attempt to summon help from outside the village...