Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #93983 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-11-13
• Format: Black & White
• Running time: 106 minutes

Amazon.com
A Ukrainian village defends itself against the Nazi onslaught. Dramatic battle scenes. Most of the men take to the hills to begin guerrilla attacks. The farmers destroy their crops to keep them from the enemy.

A Nazi doctor begins using the children for blood transfusions for their soldiers, and a group of teenagers attempt to take arms to the resistance. Good performances. Nominated for the following Academy Awards: Best Cinematography, Interior Decoration, Music Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture, Sound Recording, Special Effects and Writing, and Original Screenplay by William Hellman.

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Customer Reviews

Good Movie - Awful Print
It is unfortunate when a classic is treated with such disregard and carelessness as this one has been.

The film quality is 'ok' but with some fuzzy scenes and a few missing frames and film burn here and there. The sound is of poor quality, dropping off to near silence at many points. To add insult to injury, my copy came complete with a manufacturing defect that stops the film short of it's conclusion.

All is not lost however... "Reel Enterprises" was kind enough to include a persistant watermark of it's logo in the lower right hand corner throughout the entire film. Otherwise I would have definitly thought this was a bootleg or Korean import.

A real shame for such an otherwise great film.

No menu, no extras, no frills but cheap at $10.00

Five years later and we were told to hate these people!
Here we have Walter Brennan and Dean Jagger leading an all star cast
in a movie telling how brave the Russian people are.
There were several of these early 40's war movies showing
our solidarity with the Russian against the Germans.
The same governments turned on each other just a short time further on.
In a time when the KGB has fallen we still have the CIA:
they are the same sort of beast as these governments
that tell us to love them one year and hate them the next?
There is a lesson here of history.

"The Earth belongs to us, the people, if we fight for it. And we will fight for it!"
Samuel Goldwyn's excellent but now almost forgotten wartime drama THE NORTH STAR was scripted by Lillian Hellman and directed by Lewis Milestone. William Cameron Menzies was associate producer, Aaron Copland scored some fine Ukrainian-like music with Ira Gershwin providing lyrics. Hellman and Copland were both Oscar-nominated for their contributions as was cinematographer James Wong Howe. The picture received 6 Academy nods in all.

At first blush this appears to be a jolly Goldwyn musical. Happy peasants in traditional garb sing, dance and strum 3-string balalaikas. They play harmonicas and squeezeboxes whenever the opportunity arises. It's during one of these picturesque interludes that a stark future suddenly looms in the form of the German Blitzkrieg.

Bearded Walter Brennan and a slow-moving open horsecart full of kids enjoy a sunny morning filled with smiles, affection and song until a frightening drone is heard overhead. V-formation Luftwaffe planes suddenly bomb their country road. Terrorized people flee into a ditch, but not all make it safely. One man is crushed by a fallen telephone pole and a young left-handed child loses that arm and soon after, his life.

WWII has come crashing in on their little village. A quiet place that's changed little over the centuries is suddenly and violently thrust into the jaws of a modern armored beast. No matter the outcome, these peoples' lives will never be the same. Men armed with pistols and rifles quickly form a cavarly brigade to battle pantzers, machine guns and artillery. The women, children and old folks left behind vow to fight their invaders to the death.

The enemy shows no mercy. Children are strafed in the streets. Others will have their life's blood stolen so wounded Germans might survive operations. Systematic and murderous destruction is appalling, yet these brave people DO fight back! It's a desperate, unforgettable scene in one of the finest war films ever made. Highly recommended.


"North Star" is also available as part of Mill Creek's outstanding HOLLYWOOD LEGENDS 50 MOVIE PACK.


Parenthetical number preceding title is a 1 to 10 imdb viewer poll rating.

(6.1) The North Star (1943) - Anne Baxter/Dana Andrews/Walter Huston/Walter Brennan/Ann Harding/Jane Withers/Farley Granger/Erich von Stroheim/Dean Jagger