The Avengers (1942) User Reviews

British World War 2 flag waver

[lorenellroy · 7/10 · 28 January 2008]

This movie is markedly more propagandist in tone than most movies made in the UK about the war while it was still in progress.It more closely resembles the overtly patriotic US pictures from the same era such as Guadalcanal Diary or Back To Bataan .It does not neglect to pay a merited tribute to the Norwegian people for their resistance either.

Hugh Williams plays Colin Metcalfe ,a London journalist sent by his paper to Norway , soon to be conquered by the Nazis .He falls in love with Kari Alstead (Deborah Kerr)the daughter of a local fisherman(Finlay Currie).He returns to London after a short posting to Norway where he witnesses a Nazi submarine in operation .He is sent back to the country by Naval Intelligence to help the Royal Navy pinpoint the exact location of the U-Boat base from which crippling attacks are being launched on allied vessels .In the time he was away Kari has been forced to enter into an engagement with the Quisling police chief Gunther(Griffith Moore)in order to protect her father from arrest by the local Nazi chief (Francis L Sullivan).He is able to engineer a raid which is in turn followed by brutal Nazi repression The movie gives a good picture of life under the jackboot and is well acted -although for all her talent Deborah Kerr is not ideal casting as a Norwegian fisherwoman .Ralph Richardson impresses as a journalist and Roland Culver is good as Naval Intelligence man Rousing and patriotic, the movie ends with a typically robust Churchillian sentiment that still stirs the blood and it is good to see British cinema indulging in patriotism rather than restraint for once

An interesting flag-waver

[johnhclarke · 7/10 · 29 July 2007]

The first five minutes of this film - set in a national newspaper office as Germany invades Poland - are superb. Unfortunately the rest of the film suffers in comparison and the most interesting character, played by a relatively young and buzzing Ralph Richardson, is killed off far too early. Otherwise it could have rivalled Q-Planes, another Richardson tour de force from a couple of years earlier. Williams is effective but slightly colourless in the lead although Deborah Kerr sparkles. The Rule Britannia v Horst Wessel scene in the bar echoes the more celebrated La Marseillaise v Watch on the Rhine song battle in Casablanca. I wonder which came first?

A fine performance from a very young Deborah Kerr

[calvertfan · 6/10 · 22 June 2002]

I found the best scenes in this movie to be the ones in which Deborah Kerr was acting. And I'm not even a fan of hers (or I wasn't, before this!) so that must say something about her...it was only about her 5th or 6th role, she was very young, yet she was perfect for the role. The rest of the movie traveled along fairly slowly, but luckily had a few exciting war time scenes, and an outstanding, terrifying, climax. Good for a rainy day, and don't give up on it. 7/10.

Solid piece of wartime entertainment

[bob the moo · 8 December 2002]

Horse race tipster and journalist Metcalfe is picked for the job of foreign correspondent in Norway when Hitler invades Poland. On the way to Norway his boat is attacked by a German U-Boat, however when he tells the navy about it they disbelief him and, to make matters worse, he is removed from his job. When German forces invade Norway, Metcalfe returns determined to uncover what is going on and stop the Germans in their tracks.

1940's British cinema is understandably packed with wartime propaganda pieces. This film doesn't stand out from the pack but it is still worth a watch. The basic plot is interesting and provides tense drama towards the end, even if it gets all confused at times in the middle and some of it didn't quite hang together for me. The action is a little stilted at times and the film never misses a chance to show how very selfish and foolish the German officers are. This is a little heavy handed but what did you expect from a propaganda film? However it is badly done at times and seems heavy handed.

The cast are mainly good. Williams is typical of the stiff upper lip English heroes of this type of film. Again it seems a little stiff but it's the usual sort of English gentleman that we wanted to see at the time – especially when compared to the slimly cowardly Germans shown here. The support cast are OK despite the very, very iffy Norwegian accents, but this doesn't matter too much.

Overall this film is typical British wartime propaganda. The Brits save the day, the Germans are cowardly, sacrifice is made but the greater good is served. As a Brit this is a solid bit of entertainment for a rainy Saturday afternoon, but probably not much more capable than that.

Well intentioned if flawed

[TheLittleSongbird · 6/10 · 28 October 2022]

There have been plenty of fine war films and ones with a message or dealing with specific conflicts, am never going to dismiss every war film made during WW2 propaganda straight off the bat because many were more than that. 'The Day Will Dawn' was primarily seen for the cast, hard to go wrong with Deborah Kerr (in an early role), Finlay Currie and Francis L Sullivan, and because it was another film chosen to watch when visiting my godparents.

My feelings on 'The Day Will Dawn' were mostly moderately positive, while not being bowled over. Was to be honest expecting more considering the calibre of the cast, but considering the general reputation of similar films centered around WW2 it also could have been worse. 'The Day Will Dawn's' good intentions were truly admirable and very obvious and there are many good things, though more subtlety and consistency would have made it quite a bit better.

Am going to start with the good. The cast mostly are fine. Kerr did go on to do better and has an accent that would never pass for Norweigan in a million years, but she gives poignant dignity to a rather colourless role (particularly evident in the prison scene awaiting execution). Sullivan was seldom more malevolent than he is here and Currie is larger than life and touching. There is some nice photography and a stirring score.

Did think too that enough of the action roused, while the prison scene was pretty heart-wrenching and the climax terrifying. It also starts off with great promise and is well directed.

On the other hand, Hugh Williams has a very bland character and is too stiff and restrained in it. The pacing is not always consistent, at times it's perfect and exciting and at other times it could have been a good deal tauter and less deliberate.

While the intentions are obvious, good and noble, the film did feel heavy handed and pretty much reiterated what many know already regarding how evil the opposition was. While photographed well, 'The Day Will Dawn' is not that well made visually, with some cheap settings and over obvious, overused and even cheaper stock footage that is clumsily inserted.

In conclusion, above average if unexceptional. 6/10.

More propaganda about the Norwegian Resistance.

[mark.waltz · 7/10 · 2 February 2013]

As FDR said, "If anybody is unsure as to why this war is being fought, let them look to Norway". This British film came a year before Warner Brothers' "Edge of Darkness" ended with that paraphrased quote. That lavish drama with Errol Flynn took place in a coastal fishing village and covered pretty much the same topic as this, how the locals all got together and vowed to drive the Nazis out, no matter what the consequences or loss of life might be. The same thing happens here, except that it all starts with the arrival of the German U-Boats and shows how the British got involved with the resistance, assuring them with a "wait and see" attitude that the timing would ultimately wound the Nazis more than an all out attack before their defenses were down.

Ralph Richardson is the British spy in the camp, assuring Norweigans that help is imminent. He falls for the lovely Deborah Kerr, the feisty daughter of a fisherman being held by the Nazis for making anti-German statements. She is forced to marry a "Quisling" (traitor) to save her father and as a result of her marriage becomes an outcast even though she is secretly working with several members of the resistance who know the truth. The other townspeople do everything in their power to make the Nazis lives miserable, humorously going out of their way with little annoyances. When a night raid leaves dozens of Germans dead, eight Norwegian men (along with Richardson and Kerr) are arrested and sentenced to be shot, but in the nick of time, a crowd pleasing (if improbable) finale leads to a hopeful ending where the usual propaganda machine narrative warns against the Nazis and also warns the Axis (for those of them who would actually see this film) that their days were numbered and that the day would dawn when freedom will ring again for German occupied countries.

Films like this were a dime a dozen during World War II and most are at least enjoyable if not predictable in their narrative. The Nazis are presented fairly, only a few being genuinely evil, the others doing their duty as they've been ordered, a reminder that many of them too were either manipulated or forced by evil powers greater than themselves to follow a leader they feared too much to rebel against.

Wartime British flagwaver fails to gel.

[jemkat · 6/10 · 20 October 2005]

British wartime propaganda film in which Hugh Williams plays a British foreign correspondent investigating German U-boat activities in Norway. The disparate elements of the film however, in terms of location, narrative and character, do not seem to have been successfully combined into a cohesive whole. Apart from the Hugh Williams character there is a lack of focus, and the film comes across as episodic and disjointed. Ralph Richardson, for example, is for the most part wasted in a role which despite popping up briefly all over the place, seems to have very little relevance to either plot or theme. Finlay Currie, always worth watching, does well by his part and has the most convincing accent of the piece, but Deborah Kerr sounds as Norwegian as praties. Francis L Sullivan trots out another of his well worn villains.

Early Kerr role Interesting

[arthur_tafero · 6/10 · 6 August 2018]

This early Deborah Kerr role steals the film, The Day Will Dawn, an early WW2 film about the invasion and occupation of Norway, a topic seldom seen in Hollywood films. English films tended to explore topics that Hollywood films avoided. In Hollywood, intellectual exploration was considered box office poison. This movie, despite the hilarious nazi scene of a nazi officer killing a Norweigen traitor by shooting at the wall, is very effective for most of the film, and highlights Kerr's acting talents. The rest of the cast, particularly Kerr's father, do a very good job in the film. Some portrayals of the nazis border on cartoonish, but that is to be expected, considering the time period. A good WW actioner.

Made in a Good Cause, but not a Good Film

[JamesHitchcock · 5/10 · 15 August 2004]

Possible spoilers

The technical limitations of the cinema in the early forties meant that it was not possible at that date to portray battle scenes with any degree of convincing realism; many of what we now remember as great Second World War films were made in the fifties and sixties, long after the war itself had finished. Nevertheless, film-makers in both Britain and America were keen to show their patriotism by making propaganda films in support of the war effort. A popular way of doing this was to concentrate on the struggles being waged by European resistance movements against Nazi occupation, as the small-scale guerrilla actions involved in these struggles were easier to show than full-scale battles. This led to British films such as 'The Foreman Went to France', 'One of our Aircraft is Missing' (set in Holland), and 'Went the Day Well', which features British resistance to a fictitious German invasion. There were also American equivalents, such as 'The Moon is Down', (set in Norway), 'The North Star' (set in the Ukraine) and, most famously, 'Casablanca', set in French Morocco.

'The Day Will Dawn' falls within this tradition. Colin Metcalfe, a young journalist, is parachuted into occupied Norway to help the Norwegian Resistance destroy a U-Boat base in a fiord. Metcalfe is familiar with the area, having previously been his newspaper's Norwegian correspondent, and volunteers for the mission partly out of patriotic zeal to 'do his bit' and partly in the hope of rekindling a romance with Kari, the beautiful daughter of a local fisherman. To his horror, however, he finds that Kari is now engaged to be married to Inspector Gunther, the unpleasant pro-Quisling chief of police for the district. The plot unfolds in the best 'Boy's Own' tradition, with Metcalfe and his heroic Norwegian allies battling the dastardly Nazis.

'The North Star' is admittedly a ludicrous and distasteful attempt to whitewash Stalinism, but some of the above films- particularly 'Casablanca' but also, in my view, 'Went the Day Well?'- are today classics. 'The Day Will Dawn', however, does not fall into that category. No doubt it was well received in its day by audiences who enjoyed its celebration of British (and Norwegian) daring and determination and its message that the Nazis could be beaten, but it is today no more than a mediocre period piece. It was obviously shot quickly, and on a small budget. The acting is unmemorable; the best-known cast member is Deborah Kerr, as Kari, but this is one of her weaker films. In some of her other early films, such as 'Love on the Dole', she showed great promise, but she gives little hint here that she would go on to become a major Hollywood star.

The main reason, however, why the film fails to convince today is that it seems too much like heavy-handed propaganda to be entertaining. Like a number of propagandist movies ('The Green Berets', set in Vietnam, is another example that comes to mind) it makes the mistake of going over the top. By this I do not mean that it exaggerates Nazi brutality, as the real Nazis were every bit as bad as those depicted in the film, and worse. I mean that the film never misses an opportunity to score propaganda points, even when this is to the detriment of the story.

For example, almost as soon as Metcalfe lands, his life is saved when an anti-Nazi Austrian soldier not only allows him to escape, but even tells him how he can make contact with the resistance. The authors clearly wanted to imply that all Austrians were anti-German, ignoring the fact that many actually supported the Anschluss, and that even those who opposed it often did so because they were against Nazism, not against the principle of union with Germany. No doubt there were many Wehrmacht soldiers who disliked the regime for which they were fighting, but few if any of these would have risked execution for treason or dereliction of duty by deliberately failing to capture a British agent. The Resistance would certainly not have revealed their secrets to anyone in German uniform. Similarly, it seems unlikely that a Resistance fighter would have drawn attention to his pro-Allied sympathies by keeping a portrait of George Washington in his home, or that the general population would have given such open support to attacking British troops. To do so, given that the attack was merely a commando raid rather than final liberation, would have been to invite bloody retribution once German forces had re-established control of the area. The villains are not only wicked but also cowardly and physically unattractive; the senior German officer, for example, is so grotesquely fat that in real life he would doubtless have been rejected as unfit for military service.

The treachery of the Quisling Gunther is explained by the fact that he is himself half-German, with the implication that no pure-blooded Norwegian would have betrayed his country. The occupying German troops all speak fluent Norwegian; this is explained by saying that, as children, they took refuge in Norway from the First World War. The idea, of course, is to try and add the sin of ingratitude to the other crimes of which the Nazis are guilty. Unfortunately, this supposed historical episode is completely fictitious. Watching 'The Day Will Dawn', it struck me that Dr Goebbels was not the only person in 1942 who was distorting the truth for political ends and that a film made in a good cause is not automatically a good film. 5/10

So bad that it's worth watching !

[Daytona-2 · 6/10 · 24 September 2006]

A typical propaganda film of the period, containing comical German stereotypes, a bland predictable plot, and of course, an American hero, in an effort to create a sense of fraternity. It's simply not credible - British audiences must have been really gullible to put up with this.

It does however manage to collect a couple of honours as far as I'm concerned -

• it has the worst fight scene I've ever seen - it's worth watching the first 5 minutes just to see it !

• it has the worst bit of set design I've ever seen - in the last 5 minutes when the heroic British invasion forces land (just in time to prevent the execution of the hero.....), the landing craft, which people on the beach pull in with a rope, appears to have been knocked up by a carpenter using banisters for the side and a bit of chipboard for the ramp. It looks like something children would construct for the school play !

Sabotage in Norway

[rmax304823 · 5/10 · 6 September 2012]

A brisk story of Hugh Williams as a British reporter who plays the horses, knocks about Europe as the war begins, and trades quips and rounds of beer with such colleagues as Ralph Richardson.

He's exiled to Norway for his light and careless approach to his duties, but Norway turns into a hot spot when the Germans take it over and build a secret U-boat base. With the help of locals, who include Deborah Kerr, Williams manages to escape but the government sends him back to the village to set up a signal to the bombers that will try to demolish the submarine base.

The base is, in fact, destroyed by the raid but Williams and many others are taken into custody and sentenced to be executed. This leads to a few harrowing moments in the jail, while Williams comforts a terrified Kerr. Then the cavalry arrives. Some day the dawn will come again.

It's a rather mediocre war-time flag waver. It's not bad; it's just that it's not very polished. The plot, looked at as a whole, resembles the crab nebula of Orion. Britain to Poland to Britain to Norway to Britain to Norway to Britain.

Williams is all right as the wisecracking reporter but Deborah Kerr, a truly fine actress, is miscast and undone by her make up. Kerr has a fragile beauty and a tremulous voice. She's always a little frightened in her later movies. (I like that in a woman.) But here she's barely recognizable as an earthy, stalwart Norwegian peasant. I mean it literally when I say "barely recognizable." Her fair hair is bound in curls that twist around each other like a loaf of challah. Her eyelids seem to have been darkened so much that they droop like an alcoholic's, and her lipstick is a glossy obsidian. She was only twenty-one but appears older and, in some scenes, a little debauched. She has one or two poignant moments, though. While exchanging small talk with Williams, awaiting execution in a darkened cell, she suddenly shudders, buries her face against his shoulder, and cries, "I'm AFRAID." So are we all, darling.

The sequence in which Williams is parachuted into Norway is short but done with vigor.

Apart from the overuse of some stock footage, a rousing wartime film.

[planktonrules · 9/10 · 23 July 2018]

The purpose of many of the films made during WWII was to rouse the people in favor of the war effort....a sort of positive propaganda effort. And, when it comes to this goal, few pictures do as well as "The Day Will Dawn" (also called "The Avengers").

The story begins with the Nazi invasion of Poland. The scene opens up in a newspaper office and folks are excited about the UK finally being at war...but also concerned that the British government has so far done nothing to check the Germans. One of the reporters, Colin Metcalfe (Hugh Williams) is sent on assignment to cover Norway. This is before the German occupation of the country, but Colin is concerned by the actions of the supposedly peace German seamen...he sees them as preparing for the invasion of Norway. His attempt to warn the British government and people is twarted however....and later he finally gets the chance to redeem himself....by sneaking back into Norway and helping his air force to locate and destroy a secret German submarine base.

The film has a pretty good cast. In addition to Williams, Ralph Richardson, Deborah Kerr (in one of her first films) and Finlay Currie also are there to provide excellent support. As far as the rest of the picture goes, it's near perfect and very well made....aside from the overuse of bad (scratchy) was stock footage.

Typical propaganda picture

[Leofwine_draca · 5/10 · 15 January 2018]

THE DAY WILL DAWN is a familiar British propaganda picture of WW2, released in 1942 when the war was still in full swing. It has a decent cast to help take your mind off the familiarity and indeed predictability of the plotting. The setting is Nazi-occupied Norway, where British secret agents work undercover in order to bring said Nazis to book. Hugh Williams is a somewhat ineffectual hero but watch out for the dependable likes of Finlay Currie, Roland Culver, Ralph Richardson, Francis Sullivan, and Raymond Huntley. Deborah Kerr's Norwegian accent fails to impress while Valentine Dyall and Walter Gotell have early bit parts as Germans.

Norwegian Deborah Kerr getting mixed up with a local Quisling and an English spy

[clanciai · 8/10 · 19 July 2018]

We have seen this before, the freedom fighters of Norway under Nazi occupation, their hardship, their courage, their determination, their heroism and so on, and if this film at least is better than "The Moon Is Down" on the same theme, it's not up to Errol Flynn's "The Edge of Darkness". The one outstanding asset of this film though is the leading lady, a very young Deborah Kerr, who in a way sustains the whole movie. In the beginning she is just a very cheerful and happy Norwegian lass, but when the Germans come to build an oil refinery, which turns out to be a submarine base, the Norwegians get into trouble, and in order to save her father's life (Finlay Currie) Deborah has to marry the local Quisling, the local police, whom the Norwegians don't know at first that he is collaborating with the Germans (Francis L. Sullivan, awesome as usual.) When Hugh Williams as an English spy learns this on his second coming, he fell in love with Deborah during the first, he is not very happy.

It's a very typical British edifying war film from the very darkest year 1942 and sides with many others of the same kind, outdated today, but still interesting for their great moral enthusiasm about surviving and fighting tyranny.

Excellent propaganda adventure.

[plan99 · 9/10 · 14 January 2024]

Superbly done piece of wartime propaganda but not done to extreems. This film must have been hugely popular when it came out as it did a great job of showing the struggle of the brave Norwegians against the nasty Nazis. Some of the stock footage was a bid rough but this can be forgiven as it was made in 1942.

Some of the speeches from the characters pointing out how the Nazis had no hope of winning the war as they were too nasty to become victorious would have gone down very well at the time.

Well worth watching as an example of how well done a propaganda film can be done especially when compared to the well over the top Nazi efforts at the time.