User Reviews

Just finished a movie with Ida Lupino and Paul Henreid called "In Our Time" (1944). I enjoyed it.

It concerns Jennifer Whittredge (Ida) the secretary to a bonbon eating British antique buyer. On a trip to Poland, Jenny meets Count Stephen Orvid (Paul). He mistakes her for the antique shop girl. She tries to help him in his purchase. This leads to a a piano to hear Composer Chopin, then the ballet, dinner out, a tour of Warsaw and LOVE.

Stephen asks her to marry him. His family doesn't react well. Nobility marries Nobility. Only Uncle Leopold sees her strength. But Jenny sees Stephen and his family's dependence on rich Uncle Pavel's money. Jenny is independent. She leaves, Stephen chases after her and defies his Uncle and family. Uncle with cash doesn't appreciate defiance. He blames Jenny. He feels Stephen would never willingly leave his noble standing and comfortable surroundings without encouragement. Well? Right??? Wrong??? Indifferent?

Soon we'll learn what kind of mettle flows through the veins of this young couple. They start building up the family estate. OK, that sounds good. The peasants are happy in their work. They are getting a return on their labor. As long as life's good Stephen is happy.

But then the Nazi army invades Poland killing and bombing everything that gets in their way. The Polish people are asked to destroy anything that will aid the invading army. The realization hits hard that the estate must be burned. That means the house, barns (equipment) and fields. Will they stay strong or will one run?

I found this movie interesting because it is set in Poland. It reminded me that many countries were invaded by Hitler. Many people showed their true colors at the moment the enemy crossed their boarders. Each member of the Orvid Family did.

I, also, found it interesting because Ida Lupino often played the hard-bitten dame. She pulled off the never faltering Jenny beautifully. Too bad not everyone was like her.

Ida Lupino and cast do very well in a film that is hampered very much by propaganda which really makes it dated now. Because Stalin was our ally when the movie was made, nothing could be mentioned about the fact Warsaw, Poland was being invaded by the Nazi's and the Comunists.

The film does not mention another event that happened when Poland was being invaded too. That is the shipment of Polish Jews to Nazi Death Camps and Soviet Siberia Death Camps at the same time during the invasion.

While the film is another assembly line Warner Brothers production, the script needs to be redone to tell the real story. The Polish Leader's Speech on the Radio about holding Poland very likely never happened in the way it is presented.

The moments presented here deserve to have the real story told as this invasion is one of the darkest moments in human history. Most of the population of Poland was destroyed by 2 of the biggest evils in History. It is sad that Stalin has never received his due for his role in the Jewish Holocast in Eastern Europe.

(Some Spoilers) Very heavy handed WWII propaganda movie involving a young British tourist Jenny Whittridge, Ida Lupino, in Warsaw Poland looking to buy antiques for her picky boss British interior designer Mrs. Bowley, Mary Boland, who also happens to be a marshmallow addict. Jenny ends up falling in love with handsome Polish Count Stefan Orwid who's played by everyone's favorite refugee from fascism back in those WWII Hollywood days Paul Henreid.

Meeting Jenny in a Warsaw antique shop Stefan is fascinated with her knowledge of one of Poland's favorite sons musical composer Chopin and falls for her in Jennys ability to pay his piano concertos so expertly. As it turned Jenny's father was a piano teacher back in England who was also a Chopin enthusiast. In no time at all, in what seems like 48 ours, Stefan asks Jenny for her hand in marriage. Now living at the 10,000 acre Orwid Estate Jenny gets to work on her helpless, in him being forced to stay there, husband Stefan by taking control of the estate's summer harvest. Using tried and true principles of the Social/Capitalistic system Jenny uses a profit shearing scheme to get the local peasants who work there in order to increase their own output in the harvest.

This all has Stefan's Uncle Pavel, Victor Francen, the man who controls the money for the Orwid clan get very angry in that Jenny who's not even Polish and didn't go beyond high school in her educational pursuits is able to make him look ridicules in his inability to get those, the local peasants, at the estate to do their jobs like she did! What's really bugging Uncle Pavel is the peasants planing to form a union in order to get higher, instead of slave, wages for their labors. This would end the gravy train that Uncle Pavel and his good for nothing and high minded, in themselves, relatives have been riding on for the last 400 years!

All this is suddenly put on the back burner when Hitler's Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939 with his Panzers Stukas and mechanized divisions. Stefan who joined up with his unit, in which he ended up being its only survivor, in the Polish Calvary had his horse shot from under him as he tried to stop the German advance. Now with Poland not only fighting off the Germans but the USSR ,who joined the war as Germany's ally, as well it became obvious that Poland's days as a free and independent nation were numbered. With Poland now totally defeated and devastated all Jenny and Stefan could do is join the Polish resistance and continue the fight against fascism as guerrilla fighters. As the movie ends we see Jenny & Stefan set the Orwid Estate aflame to prevent the Germans from getting their hands on it and march off into the Polish forest to join up with the Polish partisans to the music of the Polish National Anthem "The Polonaise".

As for the fearless and take no BS, from Jenny & Stefan, Uncle Pavel he played it safe and checked out of the country with all the gold coins and silverware he could carry to peaceful and neutral Romania. As things, and history, was soon to turn out Uncle Pavel's freedom was short lived with peaceful and neutral Romania joining up with Germany and becoming her ally two years later in Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union! The very nation that helped him carve up Poland two years earlier! That while Poland's "steadfast" allies France and England, who declared war on Germany for its invasion of Poland, stood by without as much as lifting a finger to stop it!

Excellent 1944 film with a greatly subdued, but still superior Ida Lupino, finding love in Poland with a count-wonderfully played by Paul Henried.

What makes this film so good is that it shows the class distinctions among the Polish-from peasants to aristocracy, the latter unwilling to give up their status even as war beckons.

Had this been a comedy, Mary Boland would have stolen the show. The gifted actress, with her high-pitched voice, was wonderful as the woman who takes Lupino to Poland in the former's search to buy antiques.

Victor Francen is the embodiment of the aristocracy unwilling to change its ways. I thought by the end that he would have Nazi sympathies, given the type of person he generally played in films.

A wonderful patriotic movie filled with commitment, duty and love.

The main reason why I was interested in watching this was how a Hollywood movie made in 1944 would handle the invasion of Poland. Afterall the Soviets were now our Allie. Well Hollywood took the easy way out and didn't mention the Nazi-Soviet non aggression pact and the co invasion of Poland by the USSR, it was all a Nazi show. I only watched the first few minutes and than woke up (it was showing at 3-4 am) right at the start of the invasion on what looked to be Ida's and Henried's wedding night. It's a good thing Henried's character didn't get captured by the Soviets as I don't think they took a kind view of aristocrat Polish officers judging by the mass graves that were discovered full of them. Real sappy war propaganda fluff.