Went the Day Well?

Before and after the war, Ealing Studios was famous for one thing: comedy. But in 1942, with Europe overrun and Jerry glaring hungrily across the Channel, they turned their talents to more ‘important’ work, becoming, for a time, just one of the Churchill government’s many unofficial propaganda outlets. The film equivalent of a ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’ poster, ‘Went the Day Well?’ concerns an attempt by a platoon of German paratroops to lay the groundwork for the forthcoming Nazi invasion by infiltrating a sleepy English hamlet, and the wily villagers’ valiant efforts to disrupt their plans.

It remains a jawdroppingly subversive and efficient piece of work, as former documentarian Alberto 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. Still truly unnerving, one can only imagine how terrifying it must have been for audiences facing the very real threat of Nazi enslavement.