Businessman Joseph Davies is sent to Stalin's Russia by FDR shortly before war breaks out. His assignment: assess the Soviet's war-making capabilities, the extent of their war-readiness and Stalin's reliability as a potential ally against Hitler. What he sees contradicts a good deal of the anti-Soviet reporting in the (Henry Luce) national press and elsewhere. The Soviets have organized a society of largely peasants and serfs into a first-class industrial power. The Stalin regime enjoys widespread popular support, and the Kremlin seems to be preparing for war with the Nazis. On the other hand, as Stalin warns half-way through the film, anti-Soviet feeling in the British and French governments may necessitate a temporary Soviet "truce" with Hitler to gain more time to prepare for war.
The film (by the director of "Casablanca" is frequently plodding and arcane. However, for war-time audiences, it offered an sure-footed defense of the Russian war effort at a time when the full capabilities of the Soviet Red Army were being dramatically made known (the film was released shortly after the seminal German surrender at Stalingrad, the most frightful battle of modern warfare). Too, much of the film suggests what recent historians have confirmed; Stalin's regime, while widely loathed in the West, precipitated an astonishing degree of devotion and loyalty at home, a point driven home by the outcome of a thousand battles from the Volga to Berlin.
It seems that just about every bit player in Hollywood appeared at least once in this movie. Watch especially for Glenn Strange in a three second appearance as a southern newspaper reporter. The fillm was a major part of the war effort half-way through that conflict, and appears to have succeeded admirably in its original purpose. Walter Huston, as Davies, is absolutely first rate as the droll, understated American capitalist who nevertheless comes to appreciate the war effort of a much maligned people and social system.
