ABSTRACT
The Forever and a Day film was the product of the combined labours of virtually the whole of the British colony extant in Hollywood. For the purposes of Hollywood, Russia in the Second World War was the land of Tchaikovsky and Cossack dances, whose people, like all others in occupied Europe, suffered the privations of the invaded. The spate of Hollywood films made American audiences aware of the problems and the vital nature of industrial works. Robert Rossen's script was an unhappy amalgam of Hollywoodiana and Ibsen, while Lewis Milestone's casting of Morris Carnovsky and Roman Bohnen mixed uneasily with the mandatory Errol Flynn and Ann Sheridan. Cinema owners and the War Activities Committee of Hollywood resented the creation of a dangerous precedent but in the event Prelude to War was not a great success on commercial release and the rest of the series was shown as originally intended only to personnel in training.
