Real-life World War I hero Alvin C. York reputedly insisted on Gary Cooper to star in this biopic, a stirring, folksy fable of God and country, not necessarily in that order. As the script traces York's conversion from hillbilly hell-raiser to upright Christian, then from biblical pacifist to battlefield patriot, Sol Polito's cinematography memorably renders the shift in scene from a Tennessee hill country out of a Thomas Hart Benton painting to a French landscape that is anything but pastoral. In 1941 the film's tribute to York's humble heroism helped assuage the conscience of a nation about to enter another war, but its ethical paradoxes are still ones to ponder. As York tells the commanding officer who tries to persuade him that killing can be a moral necessity, “You done give me a powerful lot to be a-thinkin' about.”