The walls don't have ears but the chap leaning against them may. Early in the war, a British brigade is prepped and sent on a raid to France. The truth about their mission is surrounded by a bodyguard of lies, as Churchill phrased it. Nevertheless, the Abwehr has an interconnected web of spies throughout England, and they're very clever.
They enable the Germans to determine the time and place of the raid and meet the British in force. The mission is accomplished but only at the cost of heavy casualties. It's not a big-budget movie. How could it be at the time? But within the strictures imposed by the period, it's well done.
It's neatly written. It illustrates clearly the dangers of allowing the least bit of information to be exchanged in public. Some of the public are spies, willingly or unwillingly. And the Germans are shown at masters in taking tiny bit of data and fitting them into a mosaic that spells the answer.
I called it "candid" because the Germans are shown as not stupid, sneering, balding sadists but methodical analysts and planners. In the climactic battle on a submarine base, many Brits are shown falling. And the last shot shows us the spy who is the central figure, Mervyn Johns, overhearing some revealing conversation between Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne.
The modern viewer may note the casual use of such imprecations as "damn" and "hell" -- as in "Oh, damn, where are my cigarettes?" A few years earlier it was a shocker to hear Rhett Butler tell Scarlet O'Hara that he didn't give a damn. And it was only in the early 50s that Marlon Brando told a priest to "go to hell," an often remarked-upon shockers at the time.
The direction is a little curious. A vertical wipe -- from bottom to top. And in the woods, when a girl begs her soldier boyfriend to "Say good-bye to me now!", and they go into a passionate clinch, the camera drifts away from them and stares for the longest time at a bit of bay and shoreline.
What a cast. Mervyn Johns, yes, but also Torin Thatcher, Jack Hawkins, John Williams, and music by William Walton.
They enable the Germans to determine the time and place of the raid and meet the British in force. The mission is accomplished but only at the cost of heavy casualties. It's not a big-budget movie. How could it be at the time? But within the strictures imposed by the period, it's well done.
It's neatly written. It illustrates clearly the dangers of allowing the least bit of information to be exchanged in public. Some of the public are spies, willingly or unwillingly. And the Germans are shown at masters in taking tiny bit of data and fitting them into a mosaic that spells the answer.
I called it "candid" because the Germans are shown as not stupid, sneering, balding sadists but methodical analysts and planners. In the climactic battle on a submarine base, many Brits are shown falling. And the last shot shows us the spy who is the central figure, Mervyn Johns, overhearing some revealing conversation between Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne.
The modern viewer may note the casual use of such imprecations as "damn" and "hell" -- as in "Oh, damn, where are my cigarettes?" A few years earlier it was a shocker to hear Rhett Butler tell Scarlet O'Hara that he didn't give a damn. And it was only in the early 50s that Marlon Brando told a priest to "go to hell," an often remarked-upon shockers at the time.
The direction is a little curious. A vertical wipe -- from bottom to top. And in the woods, when a girl begs her soldier boyfriend to "Say good-bye to me now!", and they go into a passionate clinch, the camera drifts away from them and stares for the longest time at a bit of bay and shoreline.
What a cast. Mervyn Johns, yes, but also Torin Thatcher, Jack Hawkins, John Williams, and music by William Walton.