"Went The Day Well?", Nice surprise

[filmguy2328]

I got the"British War Collection" as a Christmas gift and just got around to checking out "Went The Day Well?" which frankly I had never heard of. Wow! What a dandy little movie. Anyone know if it was released in the U.S. under a different title?

[Bradman]

I saw this a few weeks ago for the umpteenth time. It is a very good movie but on the latest viewing I was rather struck by the totally biased portrayal of the two sides. The goodies (us British ) are extremely good, posessed of many sterling qualities, whereas the Germans are cold unthinking vicious brutes. Of course this is very understandable given when the movie was made and it's purpose of helping to lift morale, but this portrayal based on blatant stereotyping does make the movie seem very dated. I suppose that it is very much a product of it's time and that's not such a bad thing, I would have just preferred to see a more balanced approach. It's always very watchable regardless of it's faults.

[Phil1970]

Without a doubt a very good movie, one thing that's sometimes overlooked is just how voilent this film is. A German soldier beating an old lady with a rifle butt, killing the clergyman with the grenade, nasty stuff that doesn't flinch unlike a number of propaganda war pictures of the period. Despite it's rather cliched portrayol of Brits and Germans as Bradman mentioned, it's dated rather well, and was obviously an inspiration for An Eagle Has Landed where the German Para's are treated rather more sympathetically.

[filmguy2328]

Phil, you're right. After reading your post I went back and took another look at it. It is a very violent film. However, when I first saw it I didn't really think about it. Perhaps, I'm getting jaded (I hope not) by seeing how graphic the violence is in today's films, the "old" movie type of violence doesn't seem that bad. Still, regardless of how the violence was show, it was violent.

[Geoffies]

I've seen this film at least twice over the years. Must admit on my last viewing of it I was struck by the violence which hadn't particularly registered previously.