July 20, 2011
“Went the day well? We died and never knew.
But well or ill, England, we died for you.”
With these memorable words begins a masterpiece of British cinema. Shocking and rousing, Went the Day Well? is a propaganda drama of throat-lumping proportions.
Filmed in 1942, with the war far from over, the time-slip framing audaciously assumes the war’s already been won. The quiet, sunlit village of Bramley End sleeps, unguardedly, as a troop of soldiers take up their billet. But these aren’t your average Tommies. They’re an advance guard of Nazi agents preparing for Hitler’s imminent seaborne invasion. Awakening to their danger and isolation, the villagers fight back – from poacher to parson. But there’s an enemy within.
Stunningly brought back to the life after painstaking digital renovation – eliminating years’ worth of scratches, warps and torn or missing frames - Went the Day Well? is as fresh as the day it was made. A cinema release and the new DVD issue are well overdue.
Cavalcanti, a Brazilian-born documentary-maker seems an unlikely choice as the director for a film that celebrates and exudes Britishness. But he’d been a stalwart of the British documentary scene for years. And it’s perhaps his unusual perspective that makes the film so remarkable.
Tones of surrealism and brooding horror haunt the film, upping the suspense. Flashes of sudden violence - Mrs Collins, the village shopkeeper, axing an enemy soldier - seem out of place in the films of the day. But it's in keeping with the propagandist purpose, symbolic of the need for every man, woman and child, of whatever station, to be vigilant, fight back and even make the ultimate sacrifice.
Based on a Graham Greene short story, it's alive with the concerns and voices of the day. Side-swiping at the capitulating French and the Italians ('Morale? It's what the wops ain't got'), this is Britain on the brink of invasion.
Violence and betrayal lurk beneath the pastoral idyll of Bramley End. A young Thora Hird - a hale and hearty land girl - picks off paratroopers with a rifle. Mervyn Johns (Scrooge) is the church sexton and book-ends the film beside a memorial stone to the doomed Nazis.
You know how it ends from the start - and that's the point. The village, England, survives. The Germans do not. But there's a cost. And Went the Day Well? is itself a memorial to those who lost their lives in the real war and to the British spirit that won it. Fitting, then, that the title and its quotation is from a famous first world war epitaph used extensively on war memorials after both wars.
Fitting too is William Walton's stirring soundtrack which opens and closes the film. To modern audiences, Went the Day Well? might simply recall The Eagle Has Landed. But to contemporaries, the title itself had resonance. And Cavalcanti's film is darker, sunnier and more powerful than many films before or since.
But well or ill, England, we died for you.”
With these memorable words begins a masterpiece of British cinema. Shocking and rousing, Went the Day Well? is a propaganda drama of throat-lumping proportions.
Filmed in 1942, with the war far from over, the time-slip framing audaciously assumes the war’s already been won. The quiet, sunlit village of Bramley End sleeps, unguardedly, as a troop of soldiers take up their billet. But these aren’t your average Tommies. They’re an advance guard of Nazi agents preparing for Hitler’s imminent seaborne invasion. Awakening to their danger and isolation, the villagers fight back – from poacher to parson. But there’s an enemy within.
Stunningly brought back to the life after painstaking digital renovation – eliminating years’ worth of scratches, warps and torn or missing frames - Went the Day Well? is as fresh as the day it was made. A cinema release and the new DVD issue are well overdue.
Cavalcanti, a Brazilian-born documentary-maker seems an unlikely choice as the director for a film that celebrates and exudes Britishness. But he’d been a stalwart of the British documentary scene for years. And it’s perhaps his unusual perspective that makes the film so remarkable.
Tones of surrealism and brooding horror haunt the film, upping the suspense. Flashes of sudden violence - Mrs Collins, the village shopkeeper, axing an enemy soldier - seem out of place in the films of the day. But it's in keeping with the propagandist purpose, symbolic of the need for every man, woman and child, of whatever station, to be vigilant, fight back and even make the ultimate sacrifice.
Based on a Graham Greene short story, it's alive with the concerns and voices of the day. Side-swiping at the capitulating French and the Italians ('Morale? It's what the wops ain't got'), this is Britain on the brink of invasion.
Violence and betrayal lurk beneath the pastoral idyll of Bramley End. A young Thora Hird - a hale and hearty land girl - picks off paratroopers with a rifle. Mervyn Johns (Scrooge) is the church sexton and book-ends the film beside a memorial stone to the doomed Nazis.
You know how it ends from the start - and that's the point. The village, England, survives. The Germans do not. But there's a cost. And Went the Day Well? is itself a memorial to those who lost their lives in the real war and to the British spirit that won it. Fitting, then, that the title and its quotation is from a famous first world war epitaph used extensively on war memorials after both wars.
Fitting too is William Walton's stirring soundtrack which opens and closes the film. To modern audiences, Went the Day Well? might simply recall The Eagle Has Landed. But to contemporaries, the title itself had resonance. And Cavalcanti's film is darker, sunnier and more powerful than many films before or since.