Went the Day Well? (1942)

Presented as a flashback from a post-war time still in the hopeful future in 1942, the film presents the small village of Bramley End,  as sleepy as a town during World War II in the UK could have been.

Sleepy, that is, until a group of Royal Engineers arrive in town for some sort of official business that means they have to be billeted there for a couple of days. However, there’s something not quite right about these particular British soldiers. As a matter of fact, they turn out to be Nazi paratroopers working as the vanguard of a German invasion, tasked to sabotage radar equipment. Once the villagers cop to this, they do their best to come together and fight back against what quickly turns into an occupying force with all the charm and decency Nazi troops are known for (that is to say, none). However, not only seems fate to conspire against the villagers, squashing their first plans to get help in the sort of cruel and capricious manner you only ever encounter in real life or suspense movies, there is also a fifth columnist among them.

Directed by (Alberto) Cavalcanti – probably best known today and around here for directing the best episode in 1945’s fine horror anthology movie Dead of Night - and mostly unseen after his first run until ten years or so ago, this is a war propaganda film warning of the need to watch out for potential German spies, and embodying the fear of German invasion (which in reality was rather on the ebb by the time this was made). Said fear wasn’t really new to the British cultural mind, of course, and there had been a small literary sub-genre concerning German invasion attempts and occupation of the British Isles at leas since World War I (books like “When Wilhelm Came” come to mind). Went the Day Well? is an excellent entry into this sub-genre, and its direct propaganda ambitions are actually improving on parts of the form, because it emphasises the need for the British of all classes (it’s not quite so advanced as to do all races, too) to come together to fight off the Nazis, not something that is a given in a highly classist society and its popular culture.

As quite a few British propaganda films, Went the Day seems to be surprisingly honest about the price of war, emphasising sacrifices and deaths quite a bit more than any eventual glory. But then, by 1942, a simple tale of pretty, glorious war could hardly have convinced a population that had survived the first years of World War II.


Why the film still works as well as it does today (apart from the fact that Nazis are still around, despite all suggestions of humanity’s ability to learn from mistakes) isn’t of course so much its propaganda effect (which is of course historically absolutely fascinating) but because Cavalcanti’s execution of it as a suspense movie is brilliant – and I’m talking early Hitchcock brilliant here, with particularly the scenes around the various failing attempts at getting help just being great, all-around filmmaking coming from a rather sardonic mind set. But even before things get going, Cavalcanti does great work: the film’s gentle and mildly comical introduction of the village and its population is sure-handed and funny without being condescending, and sets up characters and place wonderfully, so much so that the slow, insidious drifting in of treason and violence feels like an actual violation. Once the violence comes around completely, there are some moments of astonishing brutality (particularly keeping in mind how prissy British censors were before and after the war when it came to violence in movies) – the obvious scene is something concerning a pepper shaker, an axe, and a Nazi skull, but that’s not the only moment of this kind in the film. Violence, even when committed for the right reasons, is clearly nothing to be taken lightly here, and the direct and unpleasant way the film portrays it is nothing you’d be hard pressed to find again in British cinema until the second half of the 60s.