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Went the Day Well? Photos

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Movie Info

Residents of an English village unwittingly welcome Nazi soldiers who intend to take over their town.

Genre:

drama
Original Language:

English
Director:

Alberto Cavalcanti
Producer:

Michael Balcon
Writer:

John Dighton, Diana Morgan, Angus MacPhail
Release Date (Theaters):

Jun 24, 1944 limited
Release Date (Streaming):

Mar 17, 2020
Runtime:

1h 36m

Cast & Crew

Leslie Banks
Oliver Wilsford

Mervyn Johns
Charlie Sims

Marie Lohr
Mrs. Fraser

C.V. France
The Vicar

Valerie Taylor
Nora

Basil Sydney
Major Ortler

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Critic Reviews for Went the Day Well?

All Critics (14) | Top Critics (5) | Fresh (13) | Rotten (1)

One of the most subversive films to come out of World War II, a British drama that was unsettling in its day and is even more so now.

October 14, 2011 | Rating: 4/5 | Full Review…

Kenneth Turan
Los Angeles Times
Part paranoid propaganda, part thriller and part quaint period study, Went the Day Well? is an entertaining oddity begging for an update.

July 15, 2011 | Rating: B | Full Review…

Tom Long
Detroit News
Home-front propaganda has rarely seemed so cutthroat or so cunning; for Americans, the chance to see this rarity is an opportunity to indulge in the sort of cinematic ecstasy that makes us obsessed with movies in the first place.

May 18, 2011 | Rating: 5/5 | Full Review…

David Fear
Time Out
A sickeningly giddy action thriller that looks forward to Straw Dogs, Inglorious Basterds, and Red Dawn.

May 17, 2011 | Rating: 3.5 | Full Review…

Jaime N. Christley
Slant Magazine
A wartime conspiracy thriller, a black-comic nightmare and a surrealist masterpiece in which stoutly English-seeming army types reveal themselves to be Nazis, like the reflected figures turning their backs on us in Ren (C) Magritte's mirror.

July 8, 2010 | Rating: 5/5 | Full Review…

Peter Bradshaw
Guardian
Still truly unnerving, one can only imagine how terrifying it must have been for audiences facing the very real threat of Nazi enslavement.

January 26, 2006 | Rating: 5/5 | Full Review…

Tom Huddleston
Time Out
Incredibly exciting and extremely suspenseful.

April 17, 2020 | Rating: 4/4 | Full Review…

Matt Brunson
Film Frenzy
Its jingoistic nastiness and nationalist aggrandizement makes this film exactly the kind of nonsense Powell & Pressburger's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp was made in response to.

January 12, 2019 | Rating: 5/10 | Full Review…

Nathanael Hood
Nate Hood Reviews
Graham Greene has written a good story but the scripting is indifferent, banal at times, and the direction lacks cohesion.

February 17, 2016 | Full Review…

MFB Critics
Monthly Film Bulletin
The rarely seen film, a gem, is loosely based on a 1940 magazine story by Graham Greene.

April 12, 2014 | Rating: A- | Full Review…

Dennis Schwartz
Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
To look down on the blatant propagandizing of Went the Day Well? is pointless insofar as it disallows the possibility of learning from it, but it's nevertheless difficult to not take certain elements of the film with a grain of salt.

October 14, 2011 | Full Review…

Michael Nordine
Not Coming to a Theater Near You
As an effective work of surreptitious World War II propaganda, "Went the Day Well" is instructive on many levels.

May 24, 2011 | Rating: A | Full Review…

Cole Smithey
ColeSmithey.com

View All Critic Reviews (14)

Audience Reviews for Went the Day Well?

Jun 01, 2011

Went the day well? Now that you mention it, Saturday, May 23, 1942, started off nicely enough in the hamlet of Bramley End with the preparations for a wedding being a particular highlight. Major Hammond(Basil Sydney) creates quite a stir when he and his men show up unannounced for military exercises but everything eventually works out as the vicar(C.V. France) agrees to house the soldiers in the village hall. Unbeknowst to everybody except for Oliver Wilsford(Leslie Banks) because frankly he is a traitorous rat bastard, the soldiers are really Nazis, ordered to secure the village and block communications for a planned invasion of England. However, the villagers start to get suspicious which calls for Plan B. "Went the Day Well?" might have originally been conceived as just another propaganda movie during World War II to urge the people of England to be ever vigilant and reminding them that no place is truly safe.(For the record, I put a slash through my 7's because my atrocious handwriting needs all the help it can get.) But the material is handled exceptionally well, turning this into an exciting thriller that thrives on the details of village life which makes the sense of loss that much greater in its depiction of ordinary people rising to new heights under extraordinary circumstances.

Walter M Super Reviewer
Feb 10, 2011

1942. That is the important date to bear in mind when watching this film. That was when the film was made, and when the UK cinema auidences watching it knew that all that separated them from invasion was a few miles of sea. Imagine the impact it must have had!! Plucky Brits, living in the rural English idyll, threatened by the Hun. Having witnessed their brave fight, the auidences must have come out of the flicks wanting to take on the German army on their own. The comparisons with 'The Eagle Has Landed' are easy to make, but just remember that date of 1942. The threat was real to the people watching it, unlike those watching 'The Eagle' for the very first time. Cracking afternoon entertainment, with a message of its time.

Cassandra M Super Reviewer