Search - Went the Day Well? on DVD

MPAA Rating: NR Content Advisory: Suitable for Children Movie Release: 1942 DVD Release: 10/17/2006 Format: DVD - Black and White Audio Tracks: English SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 33 mins Studio: Anchor Bay Members Wishing: 0 Genres: War, War Drama

Released in the US as Forty-Eight Hours, Went the Day Well? is a solidly constructed wartime melodrama. Actually, the film covers 72 hours in the life of the small British village of Bramley Green, which serves as the focal point for an attempted German invasion. Immediately upon parachuting in the community, vicious Nazi officer Ortier (Basil Sydney) makes contact with local Fifth Columnist Oliver Wileford (Leslie Banks), using the film's British title as their password. Fortunately, Democracy is preserved when postmistress-telephone operator Mrs. Collins (Muriel George), picking up on a simple clue inadvertently left behind by the well-disguised Germans, alerts her neighbors of impending danger. The British home guardsmen and German soldiers seen in the film were drawn from the ranks of of the real-life Gloucestershire Regiment, who volunteered their services for this patriotic morale-booster. The episode screenplay of Went the Day Well (based on Graham Greene story) was unified by the direct-to-camera narration of the town gravedigger, a device deftly borrowed from Our Town. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Leslie Banks - Oliver Wilsford
Basil Sydney - Maj. Ortler
Frank Lawton - Tom Sturry
Elizabeth Allan - Peggy
Valerie Taylor - Nora Ashton

Alberto Cavalcanti's Went The Day Well (1942) never had much of a theatrical run in America, appearing late in the war (under the title 48 Hours), so this DVD release from Anchor Bay Entertainment, part of the company's British War Collection, marks its first wide availability in the United States. The movie has never looked so good, at least on this side of the Atlantic -- there is some digital artifacting in the shots of grasses rippling in the spring breeze, but otherwise this is as crisp, bright, clean, and sharp an image as one could wish for in a film of this vintage, which previously had only been available on unauthorized VHS tapes. The movie has a few flaws, such as missing frames at a couple of moments (most visibly at a little over 43 and a half minutes in) but otherwise comes to us in very nice shape. The audio is mastered cleanly if a little on the low volume side, but is still easier to take than any of the various unauthorized editions previously available -- the British accents can be thick on occasion, but they're understandable here, and William Walton's music (which is, at times, understandably, similar to his work on First Of The Few from the same period). The 16 chapters are more than adequate to the task of breaking down the movie dramatically, and the annotation is very thorough and informative, though the author neglects to mention the movie's eerie parallels with a much later (and better known) thriller, The Eagle Has Landed. The disc opens automatically on a simple menu offering "play" and chapter-select options, and there are no special features. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide