So says Anne Baxter as a Russian peasant girl fighting the Germans in this 1943 war drama. The sentiment is nice, and while the propaganda at that time was necessary, time has proved this line to be false. Like dozens of other war dramas made at the same time, it made a promise that was impossible to keep. In this small Russian village, it appears everybody is content, gets along, and lives their life without major strife. But with the Germans looming in the background, already have invaded other sections of Russia, their days of a peaceful life are numbered. After a horrific sky attack, the peasants get together and plot their response to the carnage.

Poor doctor's wife Ann Harding is the first to feel the affect of the Nazi's cruelty. When she is questioned about her husband Walter Huston's whereabouts, she refuses to divulge the information and is brutally beaten to the point of incapacitation. The young people (including Baxter, Jane Withers and Farley Granger) take to the woods, and in the case of pilot Dana Andrews, he takes to the sky where they plot attacks on advancing German troops. They all have the same goal, to preserve their way of life and not fall prey to the Nazi's terrorism. All of the battles are excellently filmed, and some of the scenes are quite horrific.

The most evil figures in the film are not the soldiers or German officers, but two Nazi doctors (Erich Von Stroheim and Martin Kosleck) who use the peasants for their blood to cure wounded German soldiers. As these vampire doctors do their thing, we learn that they have two different motives for their actions. Von Stroheim, who would wear officer stripes as German General Rommel in several films, hates the Nazi way of life but for the purpose of self-preservation and his own agenda. Kosleck, a veteran of roles documenting Nazi evil, truly believes in the Nazi agenda. This makes Von Stroheim the more dangerous of the two. I also wonder if using Russian blood would make the German soldiers not be considered 100% Arian, thus defeating the Nazi agenda. If so, then this film has a flawed detail that they greatly overlooked.

Overall, this film is an episodic look at what these peasant lives are like. It's a film pretty much without plot, and definitely without a traditional conclusion. It's a series of various attacks between the Russians and the Germans without real exploration as to each of these characters are. The actors really don't have much to do. Some are in for maybe a few minutes, or a few seconds here and there. The peasants are dressed appropriately in country clothes and babushkas, all seem realistic in their setting with one exception. Jane Withers seems too all-American with her bobby soxer mentality and seems like she would be more comfortable in poodle skirts and saddle shoes rather than peasant couture. For a better film on the German invasion of normal people who must become instant defenders of their homeland, see "Edge of Darkness" with Errol Flynn, Ann Sheridan and Walter Huston again playing the town doctor.

The only reason that North Star gets as high as three stars is because of the awesome amount of talent invested in this film both in front of and behind the camera. Otherwise The North Star would be down there with such efforts from World War II as Joan of Ozark and Hitler, Dead or Alive.

The North Star may be the only war film in history that has a choreographer in its credits. The first half of the film would qualify it as a musical with a score by Aaron Copland and Ira Gershwin. No hit songs came out of this film, the music is serviceable to underscore the mood of the happy peasants of the Soviet Union secure in the blessings of their revolution, but ready to fight the fascist invader who dare take their sacred revolution away.

Written by a hardcore Marxist like Lillian Hellman, how could you expect it to come out any other way? Even MGM's Song of Russia or RKO's Days of Glory kept the glorification of Stalin's Soviet Union to a minimum and concentrated on the invaders and how to repulse them.

Seeing Walter Brennan as a Russian peasant is laughable enough, but that dialog about how wonderful the Russian Revolution was in bringing prosperity and peace to the land must have made the very right wing Mr. Brennan hurl after each take. Somehow Brennan was far more acceptable as a peasant farmer from West Virginia than one from the Ukraine. Though he talks just about the same. I'm guessing he felt it would even look more ridiculous attempting an accent.

Walter Huston got double whammied during World War II for Soviet apologia. He played Ambassador Joseph E. Davies in the film adaption of Davies's book Mission to Moscow for Warner Brothers. That was the other great Soviet apologetic film from this era. But if Huston could keep a straight face doing The Outlaw, doing these two would have been no problem.

Dana Andrews and Farley Granger play a couple of peasant sons of Morris Carnovsky, Andrews is on leave from the Soviet Air Force. At his country's call to arms, Andrews responds, Granger of course becomes a guerrilla fighter. This was Farley Granger's first film, he had been discovered in high school in southern California where his dad worked as an unemployment clerk. Granger in his memoirs recalls his father meeting many of Hollywood's greats between engagements when they were as eligible as the rest of America for unemployment insurance. Granger recalls with some fondness for the film as it was his first movie role, but he does realize it hasn't aged well. After this and The Purple Heart, Granger went into military service and resumed his career after World War II.

Anne Baxter, Jane Withers, Ann Harding play some of the peasant women who fight right along with their men folk. Erich Von Stroheim and Martin Kosleck play a pair of fiendish Nazi doctors, a couple of guys you just love to hate. Von Stroheim's scenes with Huston are priceless in their sincerity and their laughability today.

Lewis Milestone who directed and won an Oscar for All Quiet on the Western Front was in charge of putting this whole thing together. He had to have known that The North Star would not stand the test of time or history.

For those interested several years ago PBS ran a good documentary, narrated by Burt Lancaster about the Russian campaign of World War II. I'd recommend it rather than The North Star.

Up until WWII, most Americans (and particularly Hollywood) looked to Soviet Russia with, at best, fear. While the true extent of the brutality and human rights violations of the Stalinist regime were still not fully comprehended, there was great fear that the Russians were bent on world domination. BUT, with the entry of the United States into WWII, the Russians, our previous enemy, was now our ally. And, to engender support for this new ally, Hollywood created a fictionalized version of the Russians--portraying them as brave and loyal and almost super-human. While some of these qualities were no doubt true of those who heroically fought the Nazis, many simply fought for survival and chose to protect their own evil regime because it seemed less evil than the Germans--or because they were murdered by their own KGB troops if they did not fight. However, in The North Star, none of this is apparent. Instead, the Hollywoodized version of the Russians is given and their government, it seems, is freedom-loving and decent! What a lie. Because of this, the movie ONLY has value as a historical curiosity as propaganda. I would be very afraid someone might view it today and take it for fact instead of complete fiction. Despite this movie's attempts to portray it otherwise, Stalinism ranks as one of the greatest evils in human history.

While this is essentially the same review I gave to another pro-Russian propaganda film of this era, MISSION TO MOSCOW, The North Star is a little better as far as entertainment value is concerned. You'll rarely see the Nazis portrayed in as evil a light in any American film of the time. But it is nonetheless a lie from start to finish in regard to its portrayal of the Russians. While the people were brave and decent, its leader was the epitome of evil.