AllMovie

Nobody fought the Nazis with more style and panache than Warner Bros., who, after all, had composer Franz Waxman, makeup maven Perc Westmore, and a host of technical advisors in their corner. As a result, Ida Lupino looks her very best even when lighting the torch that will burn both the Orvid Estate and the harvest and thus deprive the Third Reich from reaping the bounty of the land. The Burbank studio also had on the payroll some of the era's best character actors, including Alla Nazimova, who is touching as Paul Henreid's fretting mother, and Victor Francen, himself a refugee from Nazi occupation. But even with all of this abundant expertise at its beck and call, In Our Time cannot hide a certain artificiality that nearly capsizes an otherwise well-intentioned piece of wartime propaganda.