Mission to Moscow (1943)

This movie is a strange cinematic artifact from that narrow neck of time when the United States was allied with the Soviet Union during the second world war. This movie was made during a time when there was a perceived need among some in the American establishment to humanize our new Russian allies, to make them more acceptable to an American public who had been taught to mistrust them since the revolution of 1917. Based on the best selling memoire of cooperate lawyer turned  American ambassador to the USSR Joseph E Davis, this feature aims to put the best possible spin on then recent Soviet history, and as a result its awkward, propagandistic, and rather troubling.

One hopes that Mr.. Davis was no where near as naïve as he comes across in this film, here portrait by Walter Huston, an actor often tasked  with playing grinding moralizers. A former Wilson administration association of FDR, Davis left a very successful private practice for the post of Ambassador to the USSR (1936-1938) specifically tasked by the president to give an honest non-diplomats eye view of the country. If this movie is at all an accurate representation of what he communicated to FDR, Davis did the Politburo's job for them.

In the course of the movie Davis treats the famed 'Moscow Show Trials' as not being show trials at all, but rather the Soviet government rooting out actual pro-German traitors. The whole trial sequence in the film is completely unbelievable, with a parade of the accused confessing under seemingly no pressure to their nefarious schemes, basically saying 'yes we were evil bad guys conspiring out of greed and pride against the great Joseph Stalin and the glorious Soviet Union' (Stalin appears in the film played by Manart Kippen in a portrayal not unlike one that might be given to a Catholic Saint). Being a lawyer himself Davis know better then to accept what the Soviet government arrayed before him. Later on in the film the Soviet non-aggression pact with the Nazi's is excused while the Russians subsequent invasion of Finland is justified.

Needless to say when the political climate in this country turned against the Soviets this movie became something of a liability to those involved in making it, studio head Jack Warner had to testify under oath about why this movie was made to the House Un-American activities Committee during the McCarthy era. Robert Buckner, one of the films produces said the film was "an expedient lie for political purposes, glossily covering up important facts with full or partial knowledge of their false presentation," and that " I did not fully respect Mr. Davies' integrity, both before, during and after the film. I knew that FDR had brainwashed him..."

The film is quite well made however, and in fact was the movie that famed Hollywood director Michael Curtiz made between the World War II classics Casablanca and This is the Army. This movie is a truly bizarre curio that feels like it came out of an alternate reality. Worth seeing for those with an interest in propaganda. **1/2