Went the Day Well?

Went the Day Well?
Theatrical movie poster
Directed by	Alberto Cavalcanti
Produced by	Michael Balcon
Written by	Graham Greene (story) John Dighton Angus MacPhail Diana Morgan
Starring	Leslie Banks Mervyn Johns Basil Sydney C.V. France Valerie Taylor Thora Hird David Farrar
Music by	William Walton
Distributed by	Ealing Studios
Release date(s)	7 December 1942 (UK)
Running time	92 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

"Went the Day Well?" is a British war film produced by Ealing Studios in 1942 as unofficial propaganda. It tells of how an English village is taken over by German paratroopers (Fallschirmjäger). Made during the war, it reflects the greatest potential nightmares of many Britons of the time, although the threat of invasion had largely receded by this point. (Germany's planned invasion, Operation Sea Lion, had been indefinitely postponed.) It includes the first major role of Thora Hird, and one of the last of C.V. France. It was filmed in Turville, Buckinghamshire.

Plot

During the Second World War a group of seemingly normal British soldiers arrive in the small, fictitious English village of "Bramley End". At first they are welcomed by the villagers, until doubts begin to grow about their true purpose and identity. After they are revealed to be German soldiers intended to form the vanguard of an invasion of England they round up the residents and hold them captive in the local church.

The civilians attempt to escape to warn the local Home Guard, but are betrayed by the village squire, who is revealed to be collaborating with the Germans, who ambush and kill the Home Guards. Eventually a young boy does succeed in escaping and, despite being badly wounded, alerts the army. British soldiers arrive, and aided by some of the villagers who have managed to escape and arm themselves, including a group of Land Army girls, defeat the Germans after a short battle. The squire is shot dead by the daughter of the vicar who was murdered by the commander of the German soldiers.

The film is set post-war and told in flashback by a villager (Mervyn Johns) sitting in the churchyard where the German soldiers are buried. He speaks directly to the camera, which, during the opening credits, moves towards the village along a road, eventually arriving at the churchyard and being ushered toward a grave monument. The villager explains, "They wanted England, these Jerries did, and this is the only bit they got" (a paraphrase of the Anglo-Saxon King Harold Godwinson's famous words to the invading King Harald Hardrada of Norway).

Cast

• Leslie Banks as Oliver Wilsford, the traitorous squire
• C.V. France as Vicar Ashton
• Valerie Taylor as Nora Ashton, the vicar's daughter
• Marie Lohr as Mrs Fraser
• Basil Sydney as Kommandant Orlter, alias Major Hammond
• David Farrar as Lt. Jung, alias Lt. Maxwell
• Harry Fowler as George Truscott
• Frank Lawton as Tom Sturry
• Edward Rigby as Bill Purvis, the poacher
• Elizabeth Allan as Peggy Pryde (a Land Army Girl)
• Thora Hird as Ivy Dawking (a Land Army Girl)
• Mervyn Johns as Charles Sims
• Patricia Hayes as Daisy
• Muriel George as Mrs Collins
• Ellis Irving as Harry Drew
• Grace Arnold as Mrs Owen
• John Slater as German sergeant
• James Donald as German corporal

Opening quote of the film

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

The epitaph is by the classical scholar John Maxwell Edmonds, and originally appeared in The Times dated 6 February 1918, page 7, under a short section headed Four Epitaphs. It is the second of four epitaphs composed for graves and memorials to those fallen in battle – each covering different situations of death. The second epitaph is headed:

On Some who died early in the Day of Battle

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

After the above date, the epitaph was regularly quoted in The Times' notification of deaths section in connection with those who have fallen during the First World War. It appeared again regularly during the Second World War.

Inscriptions suggested for war memorials, published in 1919, listed 'Went the day well' along with Edmonds’ other epitaphs, after which it appeared on numerous town war memorials.

There has been confusion between 'Went the day well' and Edmonds’ other famous epitaph published in the same 1919 edition of inscriptions:

When you go home, tell them of us and say,
“For your tomorrows these gave their today.”

It is "When you go home ..." that was inspired by an epigram by the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos to the fallen at the Battle of Thermopylae, and was later used (with a misquote) for the memorial for those who fell at the Battle of Kohima. Some resources incorrectly give "Went the day well" as being the translation of the Simonides epigram.

In some quarters, "Went the day well" has been incorrectly married up with "When you go home …":

When you go home, tell them of us and say,
For your tomorrow, these gave their today.
Went the day well? We died and never knew,
But, well or ill, freedom, we died for you.

"Went the day well" appeared in an unidentified newspaper cutting in a scrapbook now held in the RAF Museum (AC97/127/50) and in a book called Voices of Silence, a collection of First World War poems put together by Vivian Noakes, under the heading Verdun, The Battle of the Somme begins.

Reception

The film reinforced the message that civilians should be vigilant and that "careless talk costs lives". It was based on a short story by the author Graham Greene entitled The Lieutenant Died Last.^{[citation needed]} By the time the film was released the threat of invasion had subsided somewhat, but it was still seen as an effective piece of propaganda, and its reputation has grown over the years. It has been noted that by opening and closing in a predicted future where not only the war had been won but a (fictitious) full-scale German invasion of Britain defeated, and by presenting a scenario where all echelons of British society unite for the common good (the lady of the manor sacrifices herself without hesitation, for example), the film's message was morale-boosting and positive rather than scaremongering. "It subtly captures an immemorial quality of English rural life - the church, the local gossip, the sense of community - and that streak of native 'pluck' that people believed would see off Hitler. Its very oddness is magnificent, as though Dad's Army had suddenly morphed into a guerilla conflict of kill-or-be-killed."

In 2005 it was named as one of the "100 Greatest War Films" in a Channel 4 poll in Britain. The 1975 book, and later film, The Eagle Has Landed uses some of the same ideas.

In July 2010, StudioCanal and the British Film Institute National Archive released a restoration of the "Went the Day Well?" to significant critical acclaim. Tom Huddleston of Time Out London termed it "jawdroppingly subversive. Cavalcanti establishes, with loving care and the occasional wry wink, the ultimate bucolic English scene, then takes an almost sadistic delight in tearing it to bloody shreds in an orgy of shockingly blunt, matter-of-fact violence." When the restored film opened at Film Forum in New York City in 2011, A.O. Scott of The New York Times called it "undeservedly forgotten... [H]ome-front propaganda has rarely seemed so cutthroat or so cunning."

Source

• Houston, Penelope. Went the Day Well? London: BFI (1992)

External links

• Went the Day Well? at the Internet Movie Database