SONG OF RUSSIA (1944)

Under pressure from Washington to orchestrate sympathetic views of Soviet Russia, now part of WWII Allied Forces, it wasn’t long before Hollywood had to plead for remorse as post-War Commie Witch Hunts gathered steam and HUAC came a’knockin’.  The usual poster boys for such political flip-floppery?  Sam Goldwyn’s Once Upon a Russian Steppe in THE NORTH STAR/’43 (later reedited as ARMORED ATTACK/’56 with military atrocities turned non-partisan) and Warner Bros.’ quasi-journalistic MISSION TO MOSCOW/’43.  These prestige releases gaining Seven Oscar noms between them.  Yet this justly forgotten  M-G-M effort makes them look Neo-Realistic by comparison.  Celebrity conductor Robert Taylor, waving his arms instead of the flag, making this just before war service, falls for pretty proletarian Jean Peters, busy rattling off Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto when she’s not hitting the tractor back on the farm.  Taylor, instantly smitten, spends the first hour & change touring the wonders of the last 5-Year Plan with her (nightclubs; subways; crop yields - the last two courtesy of badly matched stock footage) before Russian Orthodox marriage & concertizing stopped by that pesky Nazi invasion.  Stay & fight or publicize the cause at Symphony Halls around the world?  Best moment?  Taylor, finding father-in-law at bombed out homestead, covers the corpse with his Burberry overcoat; the ultimate sacrifice.  None of this too surprising if you recall that Taylor was already in line to win the booby prize on these glossy war mellers after rescuing Norma Shearer from a Concentration Camp in ESCAPE/’40.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  You’re only a click away from the HUAC horrors mentioned above.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/03/mission-to-moscow-1944.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-north-star-1943.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Something of a cursed cast here with all our top-billed players dying young.  Chain-smoking Taylor and his chain-drinking manager Robert Benchley gone at 57 & 56.  While Peter’s dad John Hodiak’s bad heart kept him out of the war, it also killed him, only 41.  Peters saddest of all, paralyzed in a hunting accident, gone at 31.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Least talented of the major studio contract composers, Herbert Stothart was also the most classically inclined to steal from the masters.  So, imagine how he makes hay with a score that openly credits Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky for about 90% of diegetic and background music.  Much is rhythmically altered and faintly embarrassing, but not the women farm workers when they sing a chorus from Eugene Onegin.  Works like a charm.