Popular Culture Review Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1999 | Page 64

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Popular Culture Review

rather than intellectual, level. In an article, the producer-writer Casey Robinson
acknowledged that the film wasn’t a masterpiece, but that it did serve its purpose:
“ [It] was not calculated to make the critics throw their hats in the air, although it
did turn out to be a modest success.” (Peary 472)
The film’s failure to portray the complexities that were inherent in the
struggle it depicted can be attributed to a number of factors, particularly the com
mercial pressure placed upon filmmakers by studios anxious to give the audience
“entertainment” and the studios’ reluctance to introduce levels of ambiguity and
complexity that might incur censure from the OWI (Office of War Information)
and the box office. Despite injecting some “Russian” folk songs into the film to
“authentic!se” it, the film could really be set anywhere. As several critics have
pointed out with regard to North Star, the filmmakers are so anxious to encourage
audience empathy with the characters and events that all cultural specificity is
discarded (Koppes and Black 211-215; Shindler 60-63). One can perhaps excuse
this in a propaganda film made for commercial as well as political/ideological
reasons. If the film was too removed from the everyday experience of American
audience members, then it would fail as both commercial product and propaganda
vehicle. However, the failure of Days o f Glory is also related to Tourneur’s han
dling of the material.
In a letter to the author, Gregory Peck, the star of Days o f Glory (the film
that introduced him to American cinema audiences) has said that Tourneur was
unable to produce a good film because he was “wrestling with a sentimental script
and a cast of inexperienced actors” (Peck, 1-2). Perhaps the main problem with
Days o f Glory lies in its complete lack of realism. The film is, as Tourneur himself
pointed out, highly stylized, with most of the “action” taking place in a subterra
nean bunker. Even though this film had an “A” budget, all the filming was done
on the RKO lot. The absence of exterior locations adds to the sense of unreality
that pervades the film. Unlike many war films which revel in scenes of grim
action and violence. Days o f Glory contains few action scenes. The few scenes
involving military engagement are shot from the point of view of the small band of
guerrillas, and the action sequences are quite surreal, almost half-hearted. This
absence of battle scenes and exterior locations could lead to a highly effective film
if it instead presented us with psychologically developed characters realistically
enduring the mental effects of brutality and war. Unfortunately, as the characters
are so weakly drawn in Days o f Glory, realism is not present either in the action
sequences or in the characterization.
If Tourneur had encouraged his cinematographer Tony Gaudio to use more
low-key lighting, then the routine material might have been invested with a sense
of ambiguity and real dread. A propaganda film might have been transformed into
another “Toumeuresque” study of the nature of fear — a fear that was very real in