THE DAY WILL DAWN is a familiar British propaganda picture of WW2, released in 1942 when the war was still in full swing. It has a decent cast to help take your mind off the familiarity and indeed predictability of the plotting. The setting is Nazi-occupied Norway, where British secret agents work undercover in order to bring said Nazis to book. Hugh Williams is a somewhat ineffectual hero but watch out for the dependable likes of Finlay Currie, Roland Culver, Ralph Richardson, Francis Sullivan, and Raymond Huntley. Deborah Kerr's Norwegian accent fails to impress while Valentine Dyall and Walter Gotell have early bit parts as Germans.

As FDR said, "If anybody is unsure as to why this war is being fought, let them look to Norway". This British film came a year before Warner Brothers' "Edge of Darkness" ended with that paraphrased quote. That lavish drama with Errol Flynn took place in a coastal fishing village and covered pretty much the same topic as this, how the locals all got together and vowed to drive the Nazis out, no matter what the consequences or loss of life might be. The same thing happens here, except that it all starts with the arrival of the German U-Boats and shows how the British got involved with the resistance, assuring them with a "wait and see" attitude that the timing would ultimately wound the Nazis more than an all out attack before their defenses were down.Ralph Richardson is the British spy in the camp, assuring Norweigans that help is imminent. He falls for the lovely Deborah Kerr, the feisty daughter of a fisherman being held by the Nazis for making anti-German statements. She is forced to marry a "Quisling" (traitor) to save her father and as a result of her marriage becomes an outcast even though she is secretly working with several members of the resistance who know the truth. The other townspeople do everything in their power to make the Nazis lives miserable, humorously going out of their way with little annoyances. When a night raid leaves dozens of Germans dead, eight Norwegian men (along with Richardson and Kerr) are arrested and sentenced to be shot, but in the nick of time, a crowd pleasing (if improbable) finale leads to a hopeful ending where the usual propaganda machine narrative warns against the Nazis and also warns the Axis (for those of them who would actually see this film) that their days were numbered and that the day would dawn when freedom will ring again for German occupied countries.Films like this were a dime a dozen during World War II and most are at least enjoyable if not predictable in their narrative. The Nazis are presented fairly, only a few being genuinely evil, the others doing their duty as they've been ordered, a reminder that many of them too were either manipulated or forced by evil powers greater than themselves to follow a leader they feared too much to rebel against.

The first five minutes of this film - set in a national newspaper office as Germany invades Poland - are superb. Unfortunately the rest of the film suffers in comparison and the most interesting character, played by a relatively young and buzzing Ralph Richardson, is killed off far too early. Otherwise it could have rivalled Q-Planes, another Richardson tour de force from a couple of years earlier. Williams is effective but slightly colourless in the lead although Deborah Kerr sparkles. The Rule Britannia v Horst Wessel scene in the bar echoes the more celebrated La Marseillaise v Watch on the Rhine song battle in Casablanca. I wonder which came first?

A typical propaganda film of the period, containing comical German stereotypes, a bland predictable plot, and of course, an American hero, in an effort to create a sense of fraternity. It's simply not credible - British audiences must have been really gullible to put up with this.It does however manage to collect a couple of honours as far as I'm concerned -it has the worst fight scene I've ever seen - it's worth watching the first 5 minutes just to see it !it has the worst bit of set design I've ever seen - in the last 5 minutes when the heroic British invasion forces land (just in time to prevent the execution of the hero.....), the landing craft, which people on the beach pull in with a rope, appears to have been knocked up by a carpenter using banisters for the side and a bit of chipboard for the ramp. It looks like something children would construct for the school play !