ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Jerrie It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

James Smith Brad Pitt, please watch this movie. This is how war movies should be made.I'm guessing that this movie must have been the basis for The Eagle Has Landed. Although this movie, up until the battle scenes, is just as good, if not better.It has an almost Hitchcock type of suspense as the villagers try to secretly get word out that their village has been over run by the Nazi horde.As stated, the only let down is the battle scene at the end. Not only is it confusing to watch soldiers in British uniform fight each other, but also the charging about is very unrealistic. Dubbing the same screaming and yelling over every battle scene just makes it worse.It still amazes me though, that with gems like this, modern day movie makers still fail when trying to create their own stories. Won't they ever learn? What do they watch in movie school? Cartoons?

peter-woodhart Although the film was made at the height of WW2 and clearly aimed at keeping up British morale, it is an immensely impressive film. At its heart, it's the story of very normal people doing extraordinary heroic things. A typical middle-age post-mistress, clubs a German to death with an axe. Middle aged men (who had presumably fought in WW1) face and kill German soldiers. A sailor, on leave to get married, leads the fight against the German infiltration. The 'lady of the manor' throws herself onto a hand grenade to save the children. Although this may sound blood thirsty, it's handled in a typically low- key manner. Whether today's population could do the same is questionable.

clanciai The perfect state of emergency film, made during the war to prepare for the worst, with marvellous photography and eloquent staging - the suggestive scenes from inside the church lift the film to almost a Powell-Pressburger level. However, the story is absurd, this never happened and never could happen, and the so called Germans are pathetically unconvincing, even David Farrar and Leslie Banks. The story is Graham Greene's, and it almost touches Orwellian science fiction in its lack of credibility, no matter how realistically and well done it has been made. The women and children are the best actors, and the film is mainly worth seeing for their sake. Nevertheless, in spite of its absurdity, it's a remarkable film, and some scenes are unforgettable. The psychology of the drama of an emergency situation is very neatly realized, as first the overwhelming shock of the conquering attack, then the first resistance awakens to start with some poor tragically failed efforts, to eventually make a breakthrough and triumph. It's the whole story of the second world war in the nutshell of a small village in Britain.

Leofwine_draca An ahead-of-its-time film if ever there was one, WENT THE DAY WELL? is still a chilling wartime thriller even watched today. It begins deceptively genteel, with Mervyn Johns talking to the camera (a great device) and leading us into a story which times out to be both hard hitting and inspirational.Like the later film, THE EAGLE HAS LANDED, this fictional movie poses the 'what if?' question - what if the much-mooted Nazi invasion of England had really taken place? The answer is limited to a single rural village in the English countryside which soon finds itself taken over by ruthless German soldiers.What follows is expertly paced and supremely directed, with the villagers harried, hassled and murdered and eventually fighting back against their oppressors. It's still a violent and grim film, with axe murders, knifings and all manner of shootings put on the screen, although in my mind a scene involving a hand grenade marks the most shocking moment. An excellent cast, topped by THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME's Leslie Banks as a sinister collaborater, help make this a British classic.