Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Gutsycurene Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Hoplophile-1 In and of itself, it's a good film. Not a great film, but a good film.However, the reference to a "free people" in the opening was as sickening today as it should have been in 1944. In fact the first SSRs invaded by the Germans (especially the Ukraine) welcomed the Germans as liberators.Being produced in 1944, it doesn't show the thousands, tens of thousands, of Soviet citizens murdered or exiled to Siberia by their fellow Soviet "liberators" because they stayed behind. Russian soldiers captured by the Germans who were fortunate enough to survive the war were sent to gulags because they surrendered or were captured. Nikita Kruschev earned the nickname "Butcher of the Ukraine" for the murder and/or deportation of millions of Ukrainians sick of both German and Soviet rule. After the "Great Patriotic War," not during.The film is pure propaganda despite the fact that Hollywood, and any American who cared to do the research, knew what the Soviets were doing to their own people.Ignore the political context (or lack thereof in the film) and it's an acceptable yarn, typical of its genre.

sol (Some Spoilers) Despite the high hopes and bombastic claims by Adolf Hitler and the German High Command about achieving a swift and total victory in the invasion of the Soviet Union by Hitler's Wehrmacht which racked up spectacular results in the summer and fall of 1941. As cold and freezing weather set in the invading Axis forces started to bog down due to the severe Russian winter and stubborn and fanatical Soviet resistance. By the Red Army on the front lines and the Russian partisan bands behind them. The Russian partisans were groups of lightly armed but highly motivated and disciplined men and women who ambushed German, and their allies, troops and disrupted the German supply and lines of communications. From the start of the war with the USSR on June 21, 1941 to when the German Army was finally driven out of Russia in the early spring of 1944 Russian partisans inflected over 500,000 casualties on the German army and it's allies. The film "Days of Glory" is about one of these Russian partisan bands, operating out of the swamps marshes and forests around the town of Yasnaya Polyana in Central Russia, led by Soviet Red Army officer Vladimir (Gregory Peck). Far better then most movies made by Hollywood during WWII "Days of Glory" didn't overdo the Russian heroics as well as the evil and viciousness of the invading Germans. The bravest thing that happened in the movie, in regard to the Russian partisans, was when young Mitya, Glen Veron, was captured by the German Army. When Mitya was about to be executed he had a smile on his face and defiance in his voice, toward his German executioners, as he was hung in the town square. The Germans for their part were brutal and ruthless to the Russian people that they were in control of. Non the less the Germans weren't as bad as in movies like "The North Star". Where they drained out the blood, like vampires, of the Russian villagers to be used to treat wounded German soldiers, with badly needed blood-transfusions. Or even like in the film "Till We Meet Again" where they, the Germans, raped and inducted Catholic Nuns into brothels to serve and entertain the German Army.The movie has a very sad and touching love story with Vladimir and the two women who were in love with him Yelena & Nina, Maria Palmer & Tamara Toumanova, and resulted in one of them getting killed by the Germans. Leaving the other feeling guilty, and in a way responsible, about what happened to her. Yelena was a hardened guerrilla fighter who killed over 60 German soldiers during the war. Nina was a sweet sensitive and no-violent young women who was a star dancer in the Russian Bellet before the war began and a Russian guerrilla fighter after it started. Even though the war action in "Days of Glory" was very sparse when it did come on the screen it was awesome. With a spectacular German ammunition train explosion and a tremendous shoot-out with the attacking German Army, at the very end of the movie. With the Russian Partisans, led by Vladimir and Nina, fighting for their lives with mostly home-made guns and grenades against German tanks planes and artillery pieces. "Days of Glory" did in no way celebrate the brutal Joeseph Stalin regime that ran Russia during WWII as well as before and after the war. In fact I don't remember hearing even once "Comrad Stalin's" name mentioned in the movie. The film "Days of Glory" was about a people, the Russian people, raising up against an invader and fighting him with everything that they had at their disposal, as meager as it was; in order to drive him, the Germans, out of their homes and land for good and forever.

bob the moo During the 1941 invasion of Russia by the Nazi's the odds are overwhelming as the German army marches across the land. However resistance among the brave Russians makes up with heart what it lacks in sophistication and size.One such outfit is a small group of guerrilla soldiers lead by Vladimir. The new arrival of an 'outsider' creates tensions within the group but the capture of a German soldier offers the possibility of information and the potential for a demoralising strike at the invading army as well as his attempted escape helping the group trust one another again.Perhaps understandably the Russian/German front has been largely ignored by Hollywood in the past few decades and even now it is possible that Days Of Glory is only increasing in circulation because the embarrassment factor has faded. During the cold war, nobody really wanted a WWII propaganda piece that shows the Russians (our enemy) as upright, heroic and American (!). However now we are all in the War on Terror together, I notice this film has started being seen more than it was ten years ago. I was attracted to this by the director and the presence of Peck – however this is far from being one of Tourneur's famous films and Peck was in his first screen role. Essentially this is a big 'thank you' to the Russian soldiers by putting them in a story where they talk endlessly about why they are fighting while falling in love, looking heroic and sacrificing their lives. It is as basic and uninspiring as all that sounds and it smacks of a film that puts propaganda first and entertainment second.This is not to say that it doesn't try because it does, with some action, some human drama and the standard wartime romance. It is not terrible but it does get a little dull at times and has far too much heavy handed preaching while the emotional music swells in the background. The cast features a surprising amount of people in their screen debuts – I'm not sure if that was deliberate but it doesn't show that much. Peck shows the sort of furrowed brow and screen presence that made him a famous leading man while the rest of the cast do OK in average characters who are either jovial, heroic or brave depending on what point the film is trying to get across.Overall this is an interesting film because it is unusual to see an American propaganda film bigging up the Russians. It has some involving action towards the end but mostly it is too talky and preachy, relying on music and heroic sacrifice to pull our heartstrings rather than writing real people who we can get emotionally involved with and care about.

Melvin M. Carter The old sitcom Hogan's Heroes with its threat to the inept Col.Klink of being sent the Eastern Front got me interested in why that threat rather than say North Africa, Italy or Western Europe held such terror. The reason: It was hell on Earth! If the forces engaged by the Hitler regime had available for duty in the West there is a chance that WWII in Europe might have ended in late Aug. 1945 with a slim chance that no Allied forces would have had bridgeheads across the Rhine. Thankfully for world history The Wehrmact was ground up in the most vicious modern war campaign of the last century. Perhaps one of the reasons the world isn't( And may it never happen) a nuked out wasteland is the fact that the Soviets had fought a savage four year war on its own home soil and spent the better part of twenty years hiding the damage done to it. A scarred but comparatively healthy Soviet Union might have went to war during the Cuban Missle Crisis with catastrophic results for the world( Paris Hilton the glow in the dark two headed freak come to mind) Back on subject this film along with "Song Of Russia" was an ode to the Russians for now being on the "right" side. The film is dull with too many why we fight/and what we're ready to sacrifice speeches. Peck's partisan band is slowly knocked off until he Moscow Cutie and old peasant from Tevel's village are left waiting to be ground into the snowy steppes as a flaming Nazi tank( Did the screenwriter know something about the sexual habits of certain Nazi types " Himmler you look ravishing in that pink chiffon number") rolls over them. Well Stalin was a brutal dictator but he had hordes of increasingly effective officers and troops engaged with the German Army's best, while another brutal dictator Chiang Kai Shek, led a corrupt regime that strategically didn't do a damn thing to influence the Pacific War.Oh well. The Commie Slavs 1 The Corrupt Triad 0 the film is a two star time filler if say Paris Hilton ain't on