edwagreen Gregory Peck began his illustrious film career with this 1944 film depicting the Soviet Union defending their land from Nazi invaders. Peck leads a group of partisans who work to do damage to the Germans.This is a story of self-sacrifice on the part of partisans and there is basically no time for tears with destruction reigning in on all of them at every turn.There is time for brief romance between Peck and ballerina Tamara Toumanova, who joins the group and soon shows her mettle in shooting a German soldier.Love for their freedom has the town people sacrifice the life of a 15 year old when they refuse to tell the invading Germans what is about to occur.

Richard Crawford I caught this film accidentally but was hugely impressed by the script. Although obviously intended to be a wartime morale booster, the story didn't pull punches - good ol' Gregory Peck as the partisan leader, for instance, deciding to save ammunition by bludgeoning a German prisoner to death with a rifle butt. Not something you see every day. A number of really nice moments and dilemmas for the main protagonists are handled well. The partisans are depicted with some realism, and without the rose tinted glasses you might expect. In fact realism is one of the strengths of the film. Everything looks right. And in the climactic combat sequence at the end of Act 3, the partisans seem to be actually shooting at German pzkpfwIV tanks, quite unusual in itself. Wonder where they got those from in 1944. The story and the realism goes a bit haywire in the last few minutes of the film, but it's forgivable given the fact that the war was still going on. Not as powerful as COME AND SEE but for a film that's sixty-odd years old, it comes close. Recommended.

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.

MartinHafer This is a rotten film--embarrassingly bad, in fact. This was a piece of pure propaganda that was pure crap. In an attempt to rehabilitate our former enemies, the Russians, into our allies (WWII did create some strange bedfellows), Hollywood produced several horrid films that portrayed the Russians as "just like us", while in fact, their leader was one of the greatest mass murderers in human history. The movie is shameless in how positively it portrays the Russian people--as 100% wonderful and noble. While I do applaud the bravery of those Russians who fought the Germans, it was NOT generally due to love of Stalinism that motivated them, but survival.So is there anything that makes watching this film worth while? Not much, unless you are a REAL film buff. That's because you'll see a very young Gregory Peck BEFORE he was a star. It's amazing that this film didn't end his career outright, but he somehow persevered and went on to become one of our greatest actors. Anyone who fails should use this as a motivating example for life!