Let's be realistic.

From my favorite movies..

A Masterpiece!

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

I was able to watch for only an hour before I gave up and walked away. It's really quite awful. Other commentators here are impressed by Merle Oberon's acting. Maybe it gets better in the last half hour, because in what I saw she wasn't called upon to do much. She was, however, stunning to look at, a real beauty, about the only thing that kept me watching for an hour.The rest of the film was worse than mediocre. Some of the sets looked like they belonged in a Little Theatre production. The music kept intruding with exaggerated emotion. The fight scene in the barn had that odd, speeded-up, Saturday morning serial look to it, with two guys tossing each other around in the most unconvincing way. But mostly the storyline could not be believed at all sorts of crucial moments. For example, the moment Oberon falls under suspicion. Why would she put herself under the spotlight? And why didn't he suspect her long before that moment? There was nothing special about that moment that he should suddenly suspect her for the first time. Her plan to get into the restricted area of the hospital is ridiculously complex, relying on so many things going precisely the way she hoped they would. The method the optometrist uses to convey secret information back to Britain is depicted at some length, unfortunately not in a way that is very clear--something about glasses, but how it all works was a mystery to me.It just wasn't worth watching. But Merle Oberon is an actress I will watch out for in the future. Maybe she can act, maybe she can't, but she can sure light up the screen.

Two of Hollywood's British colony are the leads in this Columbia Pictures war film about the Norwegian Resistance. Brian Aherne and Merle Oberon, a British barrister and a Norwegian woman who have some before the war history come together when British commandos raid Norway.Oberon has a dangerous assignment, she plays the mistress of a German Major Carl Esmond and as such is despised by her fellow Norwegians. But in fact she's a spy for the Allies. Still it's not easy to hang around knowing that you're vilified behind your back.Wouldn't you know it Aherne is landed by submarine and is to make contact with Oberon. He also knows the local Norwegian terrain. Can they get their mission done and keep their minds on the mission is the theme of First Comes Courage.Carl Esmond does a good job as the major who is a typical cruel Nazi, but whom you also feel a bit sorry for as Oberon is making a fool of him. As such he has a bit more dimension to him than Conrad Veidt as Major Stroesser in Casablanca. After a lot of hot and heavy action when the commandos do raid, the ending is a Casablanca like one and I'll not say more.First Comes Courage is distinguished by the good performances of its leads, Oberon, Aherne, and Esmond and the first rate action sequences. Kudos also to Isobel Elsom as a Norwegian nurse who sacrifices much herself. The film hardly has the staying power of Casablanca, the difference between the major leagues and Double A baseball.

If for no other reason, this incredible movie should be seen to enjoy the acting skill of Merle Oberon, especially in the scene where she finally reveals to her husband, the Nazi Major, that she loathes and despises him and that she has only been with him in order to spy on Nazi activities. Directed by Dorothy Arzner, a pioneer among women directors, the movie has an endearing ending in which Merle Oberon turns her back on her lover in order to carry on her underground activities. Made in the middle of World War II, this movie is evidence of the producers and writer's knowledge of the horror of the Nazi occupation in Norway, and it presented a powerful message to the moviegoers of the day that any sacrifice was necessary to defeat the German menace. The script for this movie was based on "The Commandos", a novel by Elliot Arnold.

Dorothy Arzner's last directorial effort is replete with her usual feminist slant on things as Merle Oberon -- playing a Norwegian -- is caught between romantic Nazi officer Carl Esmond, who wants to marry her and British spy Brian Aherne who loves her, which is all a great inconvenience to her winning the war for Norway. The men are busy playing with their big tanks and their large meetings -- the state marriage of Esmond and Oberon with its TRIUMPH OF THE WILL sized set decorations is very funny. The occasional battlefield shots looks to me like they are modeled on those sets of plastic soldiers that used to be advertised on the back of comic books.Oberon, appropriately enough, seems to spend much of her time trying to keep a straight face as Esmond tries to romance her into marriage. It fits neatly into the sort of movie that Arzner used to direct Ruth Chatterton in in the early 1930s, but here, deprived of her favorite screenwriter, Zoe Akins, and forced into the confines of wartime propaganda, she still manages to get in the occasional sly dig.