Popular Culture Review Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1999 | Page 63

Jacques Tourneur’s Filins

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Greenberg 220). Although Tourneur tends to be overly critical of his films, with
regard to Days o f Glory his assessment seems valid. The film suffers from the
political naivete that is apparent when one looks at any of the pro-Soviet films
produced by Hollywood from 1943 on. Written by Casey Robinson, Days o f Glory
was made by RKO as a response to the series of pro-Soviet films that were being
produced by other studios such as MGM and Warners at the time. Probably the
most famous of these included Mission to Moscow (1943, US, Warners, dir: Michael
Curtiz) and North Star (1943, US, Goldwyn, dir: Lewis Milestone). These films
attempt to win support for the Soviets, by then fighting to keep Hitler out of the
Soviet Union. All the films were essentially propaganda films and uneasy ones at
that. Unlike films made to gain sympathy for other Allies such as the British (the
best example made in Hollywood being Mrs Miniver [1942, US, MGM, dir: Wil
liam Wyler]), the pro-Soviet films threaten to self-destruct from their very incep
tion. The stark incongruity of Holl)rwood, an archetypal capitalist structure, mak
ing a film exalting the virtues of a group of Soviet guerrillas, is apparent through
out the Soviet film cycle. In an attempt to mask this essential incompatibility, and
also to win American audience support (and box office dollars), the films trans
form Soviet characters into safe stereotypes or into honorary Americans.
One can see this plainly in both North Star and Days o f Glory. Both films
fail to address the differences that characterized the Soviet experience of the War,
preferring to emphasize the similarities between the Soviet and American experi
ence. The characters are little more than stereotypes, an American view of what
life was like in the Soviet Union in the 1940s. The Soviets are seen to be like any
other American patriots. They are fighting for “Mother Russia”: they despise the
Nazis, not only because they are deceitful and belligerent, but also because they
have no comprehension of the importance of culture (similar to Ernst Lubitsch’s
view of “tasteless” Nazis in his satire To Be or Not to Be [1942, US, Korda]).
Unlike the vulgar Nazis, the Soviets blend cultural taste with military genius and a
romantic love for the motherland. In Days o f Glory, Casey Robinson’s Soviet char
acters are little more than stock comedy types: for example the “lovable drunk”;
the little girl who fusses about like a mother hen; the romantic intellectual who
reads Lermontov as the Nazis march through Russia; and the young boy mentally
disturbed by the effects of war. This mixing of stereotypes was obviously an at
tempt to convey to an American audience, not only the varied nature of life in
Russia, but, more importantly, the great unifying force of patriotism. This great
patriotism seems to be the motivation behind the guerrillas’ struggle: there is no
sense that they find fascism, the ideology and the practice, abhorrent. This reluc
tance to engage on a political and ideological level with the debates concerning
fascism is typical of many of the films made during the war. The film was made as
a propaganda film, intended to appeal to American audiences on an emotional.