Went the Day Well?

Went the Day Well? (1942)

Went the day well? We died and never knew. But, well or ill, freedom we died for you.

The quiet village of Bramley End is taken over by German troops posing as Royal Engineers. Their task is to disrupt England's radar network in preparation for a full scale German invasion. Once the villagers discover the true identity of the troops, they do whatever they can to thwart the Nazis plans.

Date of release
1942-12-07
TMDB
7.1 / 10 (80)
Runtime
1h 32m
Genres
War, Thriller
Director
Alberto Cavalcanti

Casting

Interesting facts

Went the Day Well? is a 1942 British war film adapted from a story by Graham Greene and directed by Alberto Cavalcanti. It was produced by Michael Balcon of Ealing Studios and served as unofficial propaganda for the war effort. The film shows a village in southern England taken over by German paratroopers, reflecting the greatest fear of the British public of the time, although the threat of German invasion had largely receded. The film is notable for its unusually, for the time, frank depiction of ruthless violence.

Production

The film was based on a short story by the author Graham Greene entitled "The Lieutenant Died Last". The film's title is based on an epitaph written by the classical scholar John Maxwell Edmonds. It originally appeared in The Times on 6 February 1918 entitled "Four Epitaphs".

"Went the day well" also appears in an unidentified newspaper cutting in a scrapbook now held in the RAF Museum (AC97/127/50), and in a collection of First World War poems collated by Vivien Noakes.

This was the first significant role of Thora Hird's career, and one of the last for C. V. France.

Exterior scenes were shot on location in the village of Turville in Buckinghamshire.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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