The Mortal Storm. Frank Borzage. 1940.
This is the first war film in this blog series, and I assume that there’ll be a lot more, but perhaps not before December 1941? It’s the first one that touches on the war in Europe at all, except for a throw-away line in His Girl Friday.
Anyway, this isn’t quite the war movie I was expecting. It’s a movie about Germans, and the ones that aren’t Nazis are portrayed very positively indeed. So it’s an anti Nazi film, but with more pacifist overtones than would follow once Hollywood became a part of the war effort.
For all its good intentions, it’s a kinda pedestrian film? The actors mostly just stroll through the movie without making much impression. (But I did enjoy the old woman at the farm while the Nazis were looking for that guy. So stoic.) There’s nothing particularly exciting about the cinematography.
So it’s more about the idea of the movie than the film itself, and I was watching it with ever-increasing detachment.
(Except the final chase scene, which was thrilling, of course.)
Popular movies in June 1940 according to IMDB:
| Poster | Votes | Rating | Movie |
|---|---|---|---|
 | 3373 | 7.9 | The Mortal Storm |
 | 2717 | 7.4 | Gaslight |
 | 2363 | 7.3 | The Ghost Breakers |
 | 1789 | 7.1 | Brother Orchid |
 | 394 | 7.1 | New Moon |
 | 314 | 6.8 | Tom Brown’s School Days |
 | 218 | 6.2 | Phantom Raiders |
 | 834 | 5.7 | Susan and God |
This blog post is part of the Decade series.
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