June 1940: The Mortal Storm

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:

PosterVotesRatingMovie
sc-tt0032811.jpg33737.9The Mortal Storm
sc-tt0031359.jpg27177.4Gaslight
sc-tt0032520.jpg23637.3The Ghost Breakers
sc-tt0032285.jpg17897.1Brother Orchid
sc-tt0032840.jpg3947.1New Moon
sc-tt0033169.jpg3146.8Tom Brown’s School Days
sc-tt0032901.jpg2186.2Phantom Raiders
sc-tt0033117.jpg8345.7Susan and God

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

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