I saw this on TV just yesterday, and laughed at the way this thing ends up. The irony is that the Ukrainians are featured in a blantantly pro-Soviet propaganda flick, made in 1943, when Stalin had starved about 7 million Ukrainians to death in the 1933-34 Terror Famine. As if "the fascists" were any different from the Soviets. OK, the historical context needs to be considered, but the Soviets-as-allies ended soon after WWII, and Hollywood has NEVER yet made a film about the Ukrainian genocide carried out by the Soviet government, which continued to get the support of this film's writer through the years. Today, this film is a witness to Hollywood leftist stupidity and the ongoing presence of useful idiots there.

This film has been restored by The Video Cellar. What they have done with this horrible print is amazing. I strongly suggest you get a copy of this film at The Video Cellar. The prints here are lousy.

I have at last seen 'The North Star' film all the way through, after 68 years!!1 Is this a record? My memory is that it was called 'The Red Star'?
My parents took me to see the film at the Rex cinema in Hanworth, Middlesex, England when I was 6 years old. Just after watching the scene where the children and adults are bombed and machined gunned, we had to evacuate the cinema, because of an air raid. I have never been able to watch this film, although it has appeared on TV many times, until yesterday. I am now 74 years old and I wanted to finally understand why.
Children were killed in the film! I had already winessed several air raids during the Blitz in 1940. Although I was only 3 1/2 years old, I vividly remember the bombs and fires.
The song that the children were singing in the film 'Younger Generation' has also stayed in my memory.

Interesting how western nations make so many assumptions such as Soviets always using the address of comrade when in fact they seldom used the actual word instead used a translation, tovarishch. The movies would all be much different if they all changed to tovarishch instead.
Growing up the word comrade was seen as almost dirty or anti American, but it really originated in France after the French revolution when the 'nobility' was ousted from power.
Well, be that as it may this is still a pretty good movie even if it's a bit to simplistic, but the flaw with movies is they try to turn every day life and struggle into a one hour microcosm of the world and events or whatever the movie happens to be about.
Seldom do we see movies about events in real time. Wars are not fought in an hour and a week cannot be condensed to 59 minutes and 43 seconds so many details are left out which I believe has lead many to have a view of the world and life very distorted from reality.. Even simple things such as twitter have many people unwilling to even read anything longer than a sentence.
Well, now that I wondered way to far off the beaten path here...back to your regularly scheduled 59 minutes and 43 seconds.;)
I liked this flick no matter what phrases they used or your political leanings. Russian and Ukrainian peoples have to eat, sleep and go to the can just like every other human who ever walked the earth.
It's not the usual Lewis Milestone type movie though.. He usually did more intense stuff without 'spontaneous' dancing and singing.

Who cares what the House Comittee said. Yes, it was pro-Soviet. At that moment in history most of the country was pro-Soviet because we needed them as our allies. Had it not been for the heroic efforts of the Soviet people the allies would never have won the war and that is a fact!!! This does not mean we cannot judge the Soviets for the evil they perpetuated upon the countries they occupied and even upon their own people. Was it propaganda? Yes, but so were the news reels released by our own War Department. So were many of the films produced by Hollywood during the war years. That does not make them bad movies.

From the movie's Wikipedia page:

"Though the picture was a major studio release, it was an unabashedly pro-Soviet propaganda film. The House Committee on Un-American Activities would later cite The North Star as one of the three noted examples of pro-Soviet works made by Hollywood"

Eventhough the credits don't show the film's title, it shows everything else. Eventhough there's an ocassional drop in volume in dialogue, the film delivers an excellant show about courage, pride, and honor as well as love for comades united together for a cause. A cause for survival and a belief to fight for what is yours and mine. Stay until the film's end and see who was in this grand film. Trivia note; this film was the third film comission for Aaron Copland with the City and Of Mice and Men his first and second music project along with Ira Gershwin; a Russian Jew and brother of George Gershwin who the lyrics to the songs used here.