A digression into film: Went the Day Well?

Ok, I know this isn't about knitting, but I'm a big fan of the BFI's £5 Tuesdays - all tickets £5 all day. And this week, that's what I did instead of going to my usual knitting group (I know - booo!).

The film was Went the Day Well? by Alberto Cavalcanti made in 1942 on the propaganda budget, but one of the most unusual, intriguing and modern war films I've ever seen.

The film opens with a quote, an epitaph by JM Edmonds which was popular during WW1:

"Went the day well?
We died and never knew.
But, well or ill,
Freedom, we died for you."

And, spoken by one of the protagonists, this gives a slight clue as to the course the action will take.


The basic plot is this: A large number of German soldiers, cunningly disguised as British ones, descend upon a tiny village and demand to be billeted. Here and there they give little clues - jotting down european-style numerals, claiming to be Mancunian but not knowing Manchester has an area called Picadilly, carrying German-branded items - but the locals either think they are imagining things or run unwittingly into the local collaborator with their fears and he persuades them not to take things further.



It starts out with all the hallmarks of a typical Ealing comedy, funny, jolly, lively. Even when the meance appears, at first it is merely amusing. I particularly relished the idea of a single village harbouring so many different regional accents - Welsh, Northern, several varieties of Southern, and a mish-mash of different class accents, not always in the most appropriate mouths.



But what really stands out in this film is the brutality. It's not soldiers and plucky young men being killed in combat in this film: the first casualty is an elderly vicar. The paltry Home Guard, made up of men either too old or too young to fight, is massacred in one go. Children, poachers, elderly women, no-one is safe and a whole lot of stabbing and shooting goes on. Even in 2010 it's quite unusual to see children shot on film, so for 1942 I guess that was quite daring! It;s equally unusual to see civilians killed in war movies made during the way - the whole point of these propaganda pieces was usually that the plucky locals were rewarded with a casualty-free victory. It's the one stroke of realism in what is otherwise a fantasy piece.

The uncharacteristic brutality also means that when the villagers finally get the upper hand, the audience feels a sense of suspense: so many of their initial efforts are thwarted that at first it seems unlikely this final thrust will succeed.

The portrayal of the Home Guard is quite hilarious - and almost naughtily satirical for its time.

Despite being a comedy, this film is probably one of the less romantic war films made at the time, because it addressed the fact that innocent civilians die in wartime - something often glossed over. It's probably a fairly sticky point to make when trying to boost morale, but it makes for a better film. The effect is counteracted by the fact that the film starts and ends with a sequence that tkaes place after the main events - ostensibly in peacetime - which suggests the war is won and all is well.

I hear the critics were unimpressed, but the audiences were respectable. However, almost seventy years on this is definitely one of the most enjoyable war films I've ever seen. It's also (apparently) Dame Thora Hird's first film role, and quite jarring for those of us who only ever watched her as a very elderly lady in the 1980s and 1990s.