Days of Glory | |
---|---|
Directed by | Jacques Tourneur |
Written by | Melchior Lengyel |
Screenplay by | Casey Robinson |
Produced by | Casey Robinson |
Starring | Tamara Toumanova Gregory Peck |
Cinematography | Tony Gaudio |
Edited by | Joseph Noriega |
Music by | Daniele Amfitheatrof Constantin Bakaleinikoff |
Production company | |
Distributed by | RKO Radio Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 86 minutes |
Country | United States |
Languages | English German |
Budget | $958,000 [1] |
Days of Glory is a 1944 American film, directed by Jacques Tourneur, which tells the story of a group of Soviet guerrillas fighting back during the 1941 Nazi invasion of Russia. It marked the film debut of Tamara Toumanova and Gregory Peck, as well as most of the other principal actors. It was also the first film produced by screen writer Casey Robinson, who in early January 1943 had been contracted by RKO Radio Pictures to write and produce the film under the working title This Is Russia. [2] Robinson and Toumanova married in 1944 [3] and divorced in 1955. [4] The film included the last screen appearance of actor Erford Gage, who subsequently entered the U.S. Army and was killed in action in 1945.
In the snowy Russian countryside of the early 1940s, Vladimir (Gregory Peck) leads a squad of partisan fighters operating behind German lines. The group's routines are disrupted when Nina (Tamara Toumanova), a ballerina, is brought to their hideout after becoming separated from her troupe. She confesses she has neither handled a gun nor learned to fight, cook, mend, or clean. Vladimir doubts she will be of any use. Later, a German soldier stumbles upon the group's lair but is captured. That night, he attempts an escape, but Nina shoots him, winning the approval of her new comrades. The next night, when the guerrillas carry out the sabotage of a German munitions train, Vladimir takes Nina along as a sort of initiation. The operation is a success. Yet although she and Vladimir are becoming close, Nina does not understand his ruthlessness. He explains that before the war he, as an engineer, had to destroy the very electric power plant he had helped build in order to keep the enemy from using it.
The couple's budding romance threatens the stability of the squad. At one point, when Vladimir must enlist someone to hand-deliver a coded message on Nazi troop strength to Soviet headquarters, he decides a woman courier would less likely be caught. He chooses the veteran Yelena (Maria Palmer), the only woman in the group besides Nina. So when Yelena's horse returns to their hideout with blood on the saddle, Nina then volunteers to take her place. Vladimir reluctantly accedes, sending the teen-aged boy Mitya (Glen Vernon) along with her. After Nina and Mitya reach headquarters and deliver Vladimir's information, she is given a coded reply to Vladimir: "The snow will fall tomorrow." This indicates that a massive Russian counterattack will begin the next day. Vladimir's superiors put him in charge of a merged partisan operation. Before the fighting begins, however, he orders Nina to take Mitya's younger sister, Olga (Dena Penn), to safety. Fighting bravely, the group's members are killed one by one, but Nina returns to Vladimir. As they fight on, he administers her the partisan oath of allegiance just before a German tank rolls atop their machine-gun nest and explodes.
Days of Glory is one of a handful of Hollywood films made during American participation in World War II to increase public support for the country's alliance with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany. Such films, which would become the target of investigations during the Cold War by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, included Mission to Moscow , The North Star , Three Russian Girls , Counter-Attack , and Song of Russia . [5]
Parts of the film were shot in Cedar City, Utah. [6] : 287
Bosley Crowther faulted the screenwriter for "letting his story progress so fitfully and loading his characters with dialogue rather than stirring deeds." He said "the director failed to make the best of what he had," and "Gregory Peck comes recommended with a Gary Cooper angularity and a face somewhat like that modest gentleman's, but his acting is equally stiff." [7] The film recorded a loss of $593,000. [8]
Vernon L. Walker, James G. Stewart, and Roy Granville were nominated for the Oscar for Best Effects. [9]
Eldred Gregory Peck was an American actor and one of the most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1970s. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Peck the 12th-greatest male star of Classic Hollywood Cinema.
Tamara Toumanova was a Russian-born Georgian-American prima ballerina and actress. A child of exiles in Paris after the Russian Revolution of 1917, she made her debut at the age of 10 at the children's ballet of the Paris Opera.
Lady Luck is a 1946 American comedy film directed by Edwin L. Marin and starring Robert Young, Barbara Hale and Frank Morgan. It was produced and distributed by RKO Pictures. The picture tells the story of a professional gambler who falls in love with a woman who hates gambling and tries to reform him.
Burnt by the Sun is a 1994 Russian drama film starring, directed, written, and produced by Nikita Mikhalkov and co-written by Azerbaijani screenwriter Rustam Ibragimbekov. The film depicts the story of a senior Red Army officer, played by Mikhalkov, and his family during the Great Purge of the late 1930s in the Stalinist Soviet Union. While on vacation with his wife, young daughter, and assorted friends and family, things change dramatically for KomDiv Kotov when his wife's old lover, Dmitri, shows up after being away for many years. The film also stars Oleg Menshikov, Ingeborga Dapkūnaitė and Mikhalkov's daughter Nadezhda Mikhalkova.
The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer is a 1947 American screwball romantic comedy-drama film directed by Irving Reis and written by Sidney Sheldon. The film stars Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and Shirley Temple in a story about a teenager's crush on an older man.
Sinbad the Sailor is a 1947 American Technicolor fantasy film directed by Richard Wallace and starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Maureen O'Hara, Walter Slezak, Anthony Quinn and Mike Mazurki. It tells the tale of the eighth voyage of Sinbad in which he discovers the lost treasure of Alexander the Great.
The Las Vegas Story is a 1952 American suspense film noir starring Jane Russell and Victor Mature, directed by Robert Stevenson and produced by Robert Sparks and Howard Hughes with Samuel Bischoff as the executive producer.
The North Star is a 1943 pro-resistance war film starring Anne Baxter, Dana Andrews, Walter Huston, Walter Brennan and Erich von Stroheim It was produced by Samuel Goldwyn Productions and distributed by RKO Radio Pictures. It was directed by Lewis Milestone, written by Lillian Hellman and featured production design by William Cameron Menzies. The music was written by Aaron Copland, the lyrics by Ira Gershwin, and the cinematography by James Wong Howe. The film also marked the debut of Farley Granger.
Parachute Battalion is a 1941 American war film directed by Leslie Goodwins and starring Robert Preston and Nancy Kelly. The supporting cast includes Edmond O'Brien, Harry Carey, and Buddy Ebsen. It was produced and distributed by RKO Pictures.
Days of Glory may refer to:
Hitler's Children is a 1943 American black-and-white war film made by RKO Radio Pictures. The film stars Tim Holt, Bonita Granville and Kent Smith and was directed by Edward Dmytryk from an adaptation by Emmet Lavery of Gregor Ziemer's book Education for Death, which had previously been adapted as a Disney animated short film.
Kenneth Casey Robinson was an American producer and director of mostly B movies and a screenwriter responsible for some of Bette Davis' most revered films. Film critic Richard Corliss once described him as "the master of the art – or craft – of adaptation."
Joan of Paris is a 1942 war film about five Royal Air Force pilots shot down over Nazi-occupied France during World War II and their attempt to escape to England. It stars Michèle Morgan and Paul Henreid, with Thomas Mitchell, Laird Cregar and May Robson in her last role.
Tamara Fyodorovna Makarova was a Soviet and Russian film actress and pedagogue. People's Artist of the USSR (1950) and Hero of Socialist Labour (1982).
The Tuttles of Tahiti is a 1942 American adventure comedy romance film directed by Charles Vidor and starring Charles Laughton and Jon Hall. It was based on the novel No More Gas by James Norman Hall and Charles Nordhoff.
They Got Me Covered is a 1943 American comedy thriller film directed by David Butler and starring Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour. Otto Preminger appears in a supporting role. It also known by the alternative titles Washington Story and The Washington Angle.
Government Girl is a 1943 American romantic-comedy film, produced and directed by Dudley Nichols and starring Olivia de Havilland and Sonny Tufts. Based on a story by Adela Rogers St. Johns, and written by Dudley Nichols and Budd Schulberg, the film is about a secretary working in Washington for the war administration during World War II who helps her boss navigate the complex political machinations of government in an effort to build bomber aircraft for the war effort.
Wait for Me is a 1943 Soviet World War II film directed by Boris Ivanov and Aleksandr Stolper and starring Boris Blinov, Valentina Serova and Lev Sverdlin.
Gregory Peck (1916–2003) was an American actor who had an extensive career in film, television, radio, and on stage. Peck's breakthrough role was as a Catholic priest who attempts to start a mission in China in the 1944 film The Keys of the Kingdom, for which he received his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. In the same year, he played Count Vronsky in a radio adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. He followed this by starring in Alfred Hitchcock's psychological thriller Spellbound (1945) with Ingrid Bergman. In the late 1940s, Peck received three more nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his roles as a caring father in The Yearling (1946), a journalist who pretends to be Jewish to write an exposé on American antisemitism in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), and a brave airman in Twelve O'Clock High (1949).
Burnt by the Sun 3: The Citadel is a 2011 Russian drama film directed, written, produced and starring by Nikita Mikhalkov, released on May 5, 2011. It is a sequel to the films Burnt by the Sun (1994) and Burnt by the Sun 2: Exodus (2010). Burnt by the Sun 3: The Citadel, like a predecessor, had the largest production budget ever seen in Russian cinema, but it turned out to be Russia's biggest box office flop, and received negative reviews from critics both in Russia and abroad. The film was selected as the Russian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 84th Academy Awards, but it was not nominated.