Days of Glory (1944 film)

In the snowy Russian countryside of the early 1940s, Vladimir (Gregory Peck) leads a squad of partisan fighters operating behind German lines. The group's routines are disrupted when Nina (Tamara Toumanova), a ballerina, is brought to their hideout after becoming separated from her troupe. She confesses she has neither handled a gun nor learned to fight, cook, mend, or clean. Vladimir doubts she will be of any use. Later, a German soldier stumbles upon the group's lair but is captured. That night, he attempts an escape, but Nina shoots him, winning the approval of her new comrades. The next night, when the guerrillas carry out the sabotage of a German munitions train, Vladimir takes Nina along as a sort of initiation. The operation is a success. Yet although she and Vladimir are becoming close, Nina does not understand his ruthlessness. He explains that before the war he, as an engineer, had to destroy the very electric power plant he had helped build in order to keep the enemy from using it.

The couple's budding romance threatens the stability of the squad. At one point, when Vladimir must enlist someone to hand-deliver a coded message on Nazi troop strength to Soviet headquarters, he decides a woman courier would less likely be caught. He chooses the veteran Yelena (Maria Palmer), the only woman in the group besides Nina. So when Yelena's horse returns to their hideout with blood on the saddle, Nina then volunteers to take her place. Vladimir reluctantly accedes, sending the teen-aged boy Mitya (Glen Vernon) along with her. After Nina and Mitya reach headquarters and deliver Vladimir's information, she is given a coded reply to Vladimir: "The snow will fall tomorrow." This indicates that a massive Russian counterattack will begin the next day. Vladimir's superiors put him in charge of a merged partisan operation. Before the fighting begins, however, he orders Nina to take Mitya's younger sister, Olga (Dena Penn), to safety. Fighting bravely, the group's members are killed one by one, but Nina returns to Vladimir. As they fight on, he administers her the partisan oath of allegiance just before a German tank rolls atop their machine-gun nest and explodes.

 

• Tamara Toumanova as Nina Ivanova
• Gregory Peck as Vladimir
• Alan Reed as Sasha
• Maria Palmer as Yelena
• Lowell Gilmore as Semyon
• Hugo Haas as Fedor
• Dena Penn as Olga, Mitya's young sister
• Glen Vernon as Mitya (as Glenn Vernon)
• Igor Dolgoruki as Dmitri
• Edward L. Durst as Petrov (as Edward Durst)
• Lou Crosby as Johann Staub

Days of Glory is one of a handful of Hollywood films made during American participation in World War II to increase public support for the country's alliance with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany. Such films, which would become the target of investigations during the Cold War by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, included Mission to Moscow, The North Star, Three Russian Girls, Counter-Attack, and Song of Russia.^[5]

Parts of the film were shot in Cedar City, Utah.^[6]: 287

Bosley Crowther faulted the screenwriter for "letting his story progress so fitfully and loading his characters with dialogue rather than stirring deeds." He said "the director failed to make the best of what he had," and "Gregory Peck comes recommended with a Gary Cooper angularity and a face somewhat like that modest gentleman's, but his acting is equally stiff."^[7] The film recorded a loss of $593,000.^[8]

Vernon L. Walker, James G. Stewart, and Roy Granville were nominated for the Oscar for Best Effects.^[9]

• List of American films of 1944

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Days of Glory.

• Days of Glory at IMDb
• Days of Glory at the TCM Movie Database
• ‹The template AllMovie title is being considered for deletion.› Days of Glory at AllMovie
• Days of Glory at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films