The North Star (1943) (original version from UCLA)

Lewis Milestone: The North Star (US 1943). Villagers of the North Star collective farm organize for fight. Standing L to R: Paul Guilfoyle (Iakin, the village teacher), Esther Dale (Anna Kurina), Ann Harding (Sophia Pavlova), Walter Huston (Dr. Kurin, the village doctor), Ruth Nelson (Nadya Simonova). This scene is at 46 minutes.

Lewis Milestone: The North Star (US 1943). School's out for summer. School's out for ever. Paul Guilfoyle as Iakin, the village teacher. My screenshot from YouTube.

Armored Attack (the altered cut of 1957) / Fuoco a Oriente / Pohjantähti (Yle TV2) / Överraskande i gryningen / Северная звезда.

    US 1943. Prod.: Samuel Goldwyn, William Cameron Menzies per Samuel Goldwyn Productions.

    Director: Lewis Milestone. Sog., Scen.: Lillian Hellman. F.: James Wong Howe – b&w. M.: Daniel Mandell. Scgf.: Perry Ferguson. Mus.: Aaron Copland. Int.: Anne Baxter (Marina Pavlova), Dana Andrews (Kolya Simonov), Walter Huston (dottor Pavel Kurin), Walter Brennan (Karp), Ann Harding (Sophia Pavlova), Jane Withers (Clavdia Kurina), Farley Granger (Damian Simonov), Erich von Stroheim (doctor von Harden). Grace Cunard (a farmer's wife).

    I believe I heard "Ot kraya i do kraya", comp. Ivan Dzerzhinski, lyr. Leonid Dzerzhinski, from their opera Quiet Flows the Don (1935 / 1938). n.c.

    "L'Internationale" (comp. Pierre Degeyter 1888, lyr. Eugène Pottier 1871). n.c.

    106 min

    US premiere: 4 Nov 1943.

    Telecast in Finland: 8 Feb 1998 and 15 May 2003 (Armored Attack) (Yle TV2).

    35 mm print from UCLA Film & Television Archive Library.

    By courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Lewis Milestone: of Wars and Men.

    Viewed with e-subtitles in Italian at Cinema Jolly, 24 June 2025.

Ehsan Khoshbakht (Bologna 2025): "Lewis Milestone’s tale of the titular Ukrainian village’s fight against the Nazis was designed as a morale booster and as first-rate propaganda. It opens with peasants singing and dancing their way to the fields and factories, with tractors parked as though for the Ziegfeld Follies. The first upbeat half-hour is deliberately crafted to make the descent into hell during the last two-thirds of the film more impactful. After the German army’s invasion, the villagers are forced to destroy what they love with their own hands: animals, farms, houses. They stand astride their saddles and swear allegiance to the Soviet Army as if joining a posse. Ninotchkas pick up arms."

"Lillian Hellman’s only original motion picture script is full of aphorisms and the crowded cast, typical of Milestone, share the screen time equally as if the narrative construction itself was “socialist”. Crane shots (James Wong Howe’s work) and music (by Aaron Copland with lyrics by George Gershwin) both choreograph and round up elaborate sequences. Milestone uses music as unifying element, from the harmony of collective life, to the dissonance of invasion to silence – the three movements repeated with variations throughout the film."

"This film was the industry’s contribution to the U.S. government’s effort to foster empathy for its Soviet allies. But it was also Milestone’s personal response to a land and people he knew and cared about. Unsurprisingly, during the McCarthy era it became exhibit number one against the talents involved in making it. Perhaps surprisingly, it was re-released in 1957, despite the controversy, under the title Armored Attack. In this version, the film’s opening depiction of Soviet paradise was excised, to leave only the Nazi hell."

"Though grossly inaccurate in its cultural and political details, the film – once described by Time as “a cinemilestone” – offers a rare glimpse into a Hollywood unwittingly endorsing the achievements of Marxist-Leninist society. It is rousing in a distorted way but features some of Milestone’s finest compositions. Today, it is almost unbelievable that this film was made at all." Ehsan Khoshbakht (Bologna 2025)

AA: Revisited Lewis Milestone's The North Star which I had seen in the Erich von Stroheim retrospective at the 1994 Berlin Film Festival and completely forgotten. Which goes to show. Those were the decades of my film and video marathons. From 1984 till 2011 I didn't usually have the time to even write down the titles of the films I saw. Orion was my second home, or perhaps the first. Only gradually I grew to the realization: what is the point of seeing a film or show if I cannot even track down its title? See less, digest more.

The North Star is a viewing experience that is irrelevant to assess by artistic merit. Seen today, it is an incredible document from the period of the cultural union of the Allies of World War II. The Big Four Allied powers were, in the chronological order of getting drawn to the war by Axis attacks: China, the United Kingdom, Soviet Union and the United States.

The North Star is divided into two parts: Peace and War.

The Peace section is a piece of mind-boggling propaganda distortion. We witness a Soviet paradise of a Ukrainian village in terms of a kolkhoz musical, indistinguishable from the Stalinist efforts by Grigori Aleksandrov and Ivan Pyriev. Or from the American Dream as presented in MGM musicals, for that matter. By the way, Walter Huston, who had portrayed Abraham Lincoln for D. W. Griffith, here plays the village doctor Kurin in a makeup that resembles Joseph Stalin.

The War section is something else again. It is clearly the work of the master of war film who had not lost the touch he displayed in All Quiet on the Western Front.

Everything had been artificial, inauthentic and fake. As soon as the war begins, the film turns serious and truly moving.

Operation Barbarossa (the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and its European allies) was the largest military offensive and the deadliest land war in history. The operation was the most decisive in WWII, and the USSR carried 80% of the burden of defeating the Nazis.

The Nazis are used to easy victories in Continental Europe and the Nordic countries. They have "never seen a burning village in Western Europe" as they exclaim here. They are shocked to witness the Ukrainian scorched-earth strategy. The villagers burn everything to destroy provisions and shelter for the aggressor.

The scenes of warfare are great action cinema. Electrifying aerial point-of-view shots help us live the terror. There is bravado and most of all a sense of loss and tragedy. Farley Granger debuts as the Ukrainian village boy Damian, naive and childish. He grows up all too soon to face the war. He is blinded by a hand grenade and falls on the battleground together with his brave partisan girlfriend Clavdia (Jane Withers). Female war sacrifice and heroism is fully acknowledged. The war had not ended when the film was made, and we feel the sense of urgency.

In a key sequence The North Star moves into horror territory. Erich von Stroheim gives a memorable performance as the Wehrmacht doctor von Harden, who abuses Ukrainian children for blood transfusions for his wounded soldiers, in the processing reducing the children to zombie-like wraiths. He is not a Nazi, and when meeting Dr. Kurin they reminiscence fondly their common teacher, the Jewish Dr. Friedenthal. Von Harden abhors what he is doing but does it anyway to perfection in cold blood. The character is a contribution to reflections on Dr. Mengele and the banality of evil. Stroheim plays the doctor as a gentleman, perhaps the most intelligent and cultured of all. The sequence is relevant to the genesis of film noir.

The film does not begin to do justice to the complexity of the circumstances of the Ukrainian war theatre. What is does is convey the enormity of the battle and the invincible fighting spirit of the people.

Participation in The North Star, as well as in Mission to Moscow, Song of Russia and Days of Glory, brought big trouble to the film-makers with the House Un-American Activies Committee during the Hollywood Blacklist in the Cold War.

An excellent 35 mm print from the UCLA restoration.