Three Faces West (1940)

Directed by

Bernard Vorhaus

Genre

drama film, romance film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 19m

Rated

NR

Rating

5.7 of 10 from 18 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A refugee Austrian doctor and an American farmer fall in love while struggling against the Dust Bowl in North Dakota. The film contrasts American pioneer grit with the threat of Nazism.

earnestpatrioticstirringsentimentalold-fashionedromanticidealistic

What happens

Three Faces West is a 1940 American drama film directed by Bernard Vorhaus and starring John Wayne, Sigrid Gurie and Charles Coburn. The film, mainly set in North Dakota was one of a handful of overtly anti-Nazi films produced by Hollywood before American entry into World War II. Isolationists and Nazi sympathizers condemned other Hollywood movies for being pro-British "propaganda" or for "glorifying war", however Three Faces West was deliberately crafted to celebrate the pioneer spirit of America, and the determination of Americans to survive the dust bowl, and contrasted these values with the evils of Nazism, thus preventing isolationists and Nazi sympathizers from being able to criticize the film as they had criticized other anti-Nazi films during this period. Writing in the Journal of Austrian-American History, Jacqueline Vansant has argued that the film "takes a bold stand on contemporary issues through its Austrian-American romance." (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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