Review – The North Star

In the brief period during World War Two when the Soviets were our allies, Hollywood gave its left wing free reign to make a handful of pictures extolling the virtues of Marxism in the face of Hitler’s advancing armies. This movie is a prime example. For the first third of the movie happy Ukrainian peasants sing and dance with Eastern European ethnic glee so excessively that they left me longing for any disruption. Unfortunately, when it comes it’s one of the few things in the world worse than witless rural proletarian idylls. A cast of minor celebrities – including Anne Baxter, Dana Andrews, Walter Huston, Walter Brennan and Erich von Stroheim – do what they can with the script, but the simple-minded propaganda is more than they can overcome. It didn’t help that TCM’s print wasn’t exactly the best. See if desperate