FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Aubrey Hackett While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Isbel A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

JohnHowardReid Walter Pidgeon (Colonel Nicobar), Ethel Barrymore (mother superior), Peter Lawford (Major McPhenister), Janet Leigh (Maria), Angela Lansbury (Quail), Melville Cooper (Sergeant Moonlight), Louis Calhern (Colonel Piniev), Francis L. Sullivan (Colonel Omicron), Robert Coote (Brigadier Cathlock), Alan Napier (the general), Roman Toporow (Lieutenant Omansky), Tamara Shayne (Helena Nagard), Konstantin Shayne (Bruloff), Janine Perreau (Mickey Mouse), Victor Wood (aka David Hydes) (Lieutenant Guedalia-Wood), Geoffrey Alan (major), Argentina Brunetti (Italian woman), Kasia Orzazewski (Sister Kasmira), Margo Von Leu (Lani Hansel), John Royce (sergeant at rehearsal), Carol Savage (Private Jemima), Tito Vuolo (Italian bill-poster), Audey Long (Countess Cressanti), Doris Lloyd (Mrs Omicron), Lotus Thompson (female private), Emil Rameau (proprietor), Henry Kulky (Russian lieutenant), Kenneth Hunter (the brigadier- general), Sigmund Halperon (a German), Richard Fraser (the transport checking officer).Director: GEORGE SIDNEY. Screenplay: Gina Kaus, Arthur Wimperis. Based on the 1947 novel Vespers in Vienna by Bruce Marshall. Photography: Charles Rosher. Film editor: James E. Newcom. Art directors: Cedric Gibbons and Hans Peters. Set decorators: Edwin B. Willis and Hugh Hunt. Costumes designed by Helen Rose. Make-up: Jack Dawn. Hair styles: Sydney Guilaroff. Special effects: Warren Newcombe. Camera operator: John M. Nickolaus, jr. Music composed by Miklos Rozsa, orchestrated by by Eugene Zador. Sound supervisor: Douglas Shearer. Producer: Carey Wilson.Copyright 29 September 1949 by Loew's Inc. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Picture. New York opening at the Capitol: 8 December 1949. U.S. release: 14 October 1949. U.K. release: 17 April 1950. Australian release: 18 May 1950. 10,689 feet. 118 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Seeking refuge in postwar Vienna, a young ballerina is determined not to be repatriated to her Communist homeland.NOTES: Nominated for an Academy Award for black-and-white Art Direction, Cedric Gibbons, Hans Peters, Edwin B. Willis and Hugh Hunt, lost to Sunset Boulevard.COMMENT: Although here it serves as a blatantly biased piece of hysterical anti-Communist propaganda, the plight of displaced persons in postwar Vienna seems a worthy enough theme. Indeed it was treated with both realism and stunning power in :The Third Man" (1949). Unfortunately, however, the characters of The Red Danube form a medley from musical comedy and gaslight melodrama. In real life, Colonel Nicobar would have faced a court martial and Colonel Piniev a firing squad, whilst the Mother Superior would have been drummed out of every convent this side of heaven. And while Hollywood may fondly imagine that brass hats are all comedic morons, they are definitely not akin to the amusing cretins depicted here by Messrs Robert Coote and Francis L. Sullivan. In all, it is difficult to name a less credible tale served up under the guise of realistic fiction. Yet, thanks to director George Sidney's skill, abetted by some fine photography and excellent sets, certain scenes do come across with undeniable force.

mtloans First, I was amazed a film like this could be made in International Socialist (Communist) infested Hollywood in the late 1940's. Read the book "Hollywood Party" by Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley. A huge proportion of Hollywood's behind the scenes employees (not the stars) took their marching orders from Moscow. This was at the same time the studio heads were in cahoots with the National Socialists of Germany in making sure nothing bad was said about Herr Hitler.The funny part was the Ribbentrop/Molotov Non-aggression Pact where the Nazis and the Communists agreed to carve up Poland. Up until then the Hollywood myrmidons blindly followed the anti-Fascist line of Stalin. Stalin needed a word to describe his internal enemies so he picked "Fascist". I mean the loyal Communist apparatchiks he executed by the thousands were suddenly 'Fascist'? The word stuck both in the UUSR and the US and the blind left today who won't read history still use this epithet against everyone they disagree with, not remotely knowing the word's true meaning. Mussolini of course came from a famous Socialist family and was the editor of Italy's leading Socialist publication: "Avante". Fascism, Nazism, Communism -- all repressive Socialist political systems. Anyway, the hard leftists in Hollywood after denouncing Nazis and Fascists for a decade now had to praise them to the sky by orders from Stalin. Being the rotten people they were, they turned on a dime without even blinking - like Orcs.Why does this all matter? Well, Walter Pidgeon's character like 99% of Allied soldiers had little clue about the horrible nature of Communism given the propaganda about Uncle Joe Stalin being our ally. Pidgeon gets a first hand glimpse of the forced repatriation of USSR dissidents when the first man he tries to turn over, an elderly gentleman, requests that he pack a few things, walks into the next room and you hear an instantaneous gunshot - he had blown his brains out. Pidgeon takes his orders in turning over these poor people waiting to be executed or put in the Gulag back in the "Workers Paradise" but finally realizes with the help of Ethel Barrymore's Character - Mother Superior - that he is committing an awful crime against humanity and fights back. Just watch the rest of the movie as it plays out.If you want to learn more about the Allied treachery, read "Operation Keelhaul" by Julius Epstein.Hollywood is pretty craven - imagine a Spielberg type being given this script - no way he would make this film. He would never turn on his ideological masters. The enemy in Hollywood will always be Nazis and Fascists, the ideological allies of the Communists. Muslim terrorists could blow up Hollywood and the first script about that event would have the Muslims being replaced by the Waffen SS without even the slightest hesitation.

sol **SPOILERS** What struck me most about the film "The Red Danube" was the very strong religious implications in it. We have British Colonel Michael "Hooky" Nicobar, Walter Pidgeon, who's lost faith in an Almighty when his son who was preparing to study for the priesthood ended up getting shot down and killed over Germany in a bombing run. Being the good soldier that he is in following his superiors orders without question Col. Nicobar is later involved in deporting back to the USSR 21 year-old ballerina Maria Buhlen, Janet Leigh, without as much as a second thought! That despite Maria, who's real name is Olga Alexandrova, facing spending the rest of her life in a Soviet Gulag for leaving her country, the Soviet Union, without permission.It's only after exiled Soviet scientist Prof. Serge Bruloff, Konstatin Shayne, blew his brains out in order to prevent him from being repatriated back to his "Mother Land" that Col. Nicobar started having second thoughts about the good will of his Soviet allies in Vienna where he's stationed. As for the luckless Maria she did manage to escapes being sent back, via cattle car, to the USSR by getting herself hidden for a while in a Vienna church as a nun. It was later on the promise of Red Army Col. Piniev also known as "Pinhead" to his friends, Louis Calhern, that Maria would be treated as a national hero, by his boss Marshall Stalin, back in Moscow that Col. Nicobar agreed to turn her over to him. Maria, not being fooled at all by Col. "Piniev's promises, fully knows that she's instead slated to be be shot for being a traitor of the Soviet Union! Knowing what she's facing Maria jumps out a two story window and ends up killing herself!It's then that the Mother Superior, Ethel Barrymore of the church-the Order of the Daughters of the Holy Ghost that was hiding Maria during her exile in Vienna came to Col. Nicobar's rescue and showed him the way to redeem himself. This was by Col. Nicobar mistakingly, as if the Lord was secretly guiding him, taking a British General's, played by Alan Napier, star studded overcoat on his trip to Rome with the Mother Superior, in her being in the presence of a British General Officer, tagging along with him! It was that brazen act on Col. Nicobar part, that he in fact had absolutely no knowledge of, that turned things around not just for him but the United Nations who, in seeing what the Soviets were doing to their citizens in Vienna, rescinded the order to repatriate Russian citizens back to the Soviet Union! That's to prevent them from facing either curtain death or a life sentence in a Siberian Gulag.***SPOILERS*** What turned out to be the biggest surprise or miracle of all was that the now reborn, in seeing the light, and former agnostic Col. Nicobar who was facing dismissal from the army for him disobeying a direct order, in refusing to turn over Russian citizens back to their "Mother Land", and even a possible stretch behind bars in the stockade was given a promotion to Brigadier General! The now befuddled and promoted General Nicobar, in him not quite grasping what was going on all abound him, was then put in charge of seeing that all this, sending Soviet citizens back to Stalin's Russia, was kept from happening! P.S There's also in the movie British heartthrob actor, whom all the women in it were just nuts about, Peter Lawford as Col. Nicobar's good friend Maj. John "Twingo" MePhimister. "Twingo" both fell in love with the pretty Maria and tried unsuccessfully to keep her from being deported back to the Soviet Union which she, by killing herself, not him prevented from happening.

ResoluteGrunt Just what is the propaganda in the movie? The following comments by "choosy" (from Seattle WA US) are, for the most part, accurate: "The other comments miss the point completely--the focus in the novel was not Cold War propaganda but the facts of the insane policies of the US and British in their respective zones of occupation in Germany and Austria to forcibly remove or return Eastern Europeans, not just Soviet citizens, even including ethnic Germans, most of whom had endured untold horrors trying to escape to the west, safety, and 'freedom' at the end of the war. That was the bemused Walter Pigeon's problem, not 'war guilt' but having to 'obey orders.' " (...AFTER the war.) "Most expellees were anti-Soviet, which is why they had escaped to the west to begin with, and thus went back to a certain death. It wasn't a small part of history--it was one of the biggest Allied mistakes and betrayals, and there were many, of the Occupation." Here "choosey" has a reasonably solid handle on events, regardless of the novel or the movie. But the following of "choosy's" comments are off-base, primarily because he does not consider the whole picture. "The fact that this forceful expulsion was done because the Allies a. did not want to feed and care for refugees, and b. did want to curry favor with the Soviets at that pre-Berlin Blockade period makes the history even more poignant." The US Army (including the British Army) at that time was actually TWO armies in transition, as the combat forces who had fought their way across Europe to war's end gradually turned their functions and responsibilities over to a fresh Occupation Army - fully prepared to address whatever was needed in the immediate post-war period in their respective zones of responsibility. Not wanting to feed or care for the refugees or concern about currying favor with the Soviets simply did not enter the equation, nor was there any need to; this is pure revisionism. There were diplomatic protocols signed by the highest levels of all involved governments before the war ended; it was the duty of the soldiers of those respective governments to comply with those protocols, most of which at the time they were signed had solid rationale.The policies mentioned in "chosey's" comments above were, in fact, in full agreement with procedures to which the Allies (US, GB, France and Russia) had worked out prior to the end of the war. Similar procedures were required of the Russians in repatriating "displaced citizens" to their proper homes in the west. Russia was seen during the war as a co-equal partner in the overall war effort on the European continent, and US combat forces (Patton's army), in fact, actually withdrew from forward positions they had reached in Austria and Czechoslovakia so that those regions could be turned over to Russian forces as per previous agreement concerning post-war occupation. (The US and UK could not have won the war in Europe without Russian participation, but all nations always exact a price for their cooperation. Russia under Stalin was no different.) It rapidly became apparent, however, that Russia and its military, if not its political leadership, had very deep-seated scores to settle with those population groups who were seen as having fought against Russian forces, and thus had caused such horrendous spilling of Russian blood. (Probably the most confusing group was the Ukrainians - who had repeatedly been forced to turn and fight their previous "partners", back and forth, and even each other, during the ever shifting circumstances of the war in the Ukraine.) Russian rule in the zones over which they had control after the war very rapidly became quite ruthless, and it quickly became apparent to everyone that the KGB was, in fact, calling all the shots. There is also considerable evidence that the KGB was executing policies dictated by Stalin himself. Still, US and British military personnel stationed adjacent to the Russian zones or as liaison personnel were required to assist with the "resettlement" or "repatriation" procedures - which caused considerable internal turmoil among those men that lasts to this day.On the other hand, there were also (fewer) numbers of people we were trying to repatriate from the Russian zones in the East to their proper homes in the West, including those warehoused in concentration camps and prisoner of war stockades. In order to accomplish that, we had to demonstrate some degree of reciprocity.These things were, and remain, simple facts of history. War, and its aftermath, is rarely as neat and tidy as after-the-fact armchair generals would prefer. War is always, at best, a series of compromises and constantly changing circumstances. The procedures depicted in the movie had nothing at all to do with "feeding the red scare, the rise of McCarthyism, or as propaganda" to use somewhere else in the world. These days we ALL seem to use events for our own particular agendas, simply by putting some twisted ignorant spin on them, or by creating asinine cause-and-effect scenarios to best suit our own purposes. No one stops to consider that any two-bit twit can throw cheap stones from the very safe sidelines, and what is safer than the distance of a half century? But, in the end, facts are facts. The major events shown in the movie happened. Do with them what you will, but I prefer to keep them as they actually were - simple reality, facts of life, consequences of war.As a life-long intelligence/liaison/diplomatic ground force professional, veteran of several wars, student of military history, who also served in Occupied West Berlin for five years watching good people die trying to get over The Wall to the West, I am .... Old Soldier