World War Two – The Magnificent 60s

In Harm’s Way (1965) *****

Preminger at a peak, the more I watch this picture, not just the more impressed I become but the more I want to watch it again – three times, as it happens, for this review. A tale of heroism populated by morally wounded heroes, the undertone of critique for the Naval establishment dealt with in brilliant narrative fashion, terrific pacing, one of John Wayne’s very best performances, Kirk Douglas not far behind, great action scenes, and one of the few movies to fulfil this director’s original intent.

You can, of course, argue that it’s the height of political PR. Just as the Americans managed with The Alamo and the British with Dunkirk, the aim was to turn defeat into victory, so this moves beyond the humiliation of Pearl Harbor to the victories beyond. But in some sense Pearl Harbor is just the prologue to a stiffer examination of men at war, rather than sailors taken to task over the complacency that left them so open to cataclysmic attack.

And while there’s a number of sub-plots, these are more expertly handled than I can recall in many another lengthy big-budget picture, no endless cutting between major and minor characters, but the minor characters only entering the frame when they have a dramatic part to play.

Captain “Rock” Rockwell (John Wayne) falls foul of his superiors for basically being in command of a ship sunk by a torpedo. On a technical point, he’s stripped of command, and reduced to a desk job, a casualty of the peace-time hierarchy determined to find someone to blame, only returning to active duty – and promoted to Admiral – when more war-oriented figures are put in charge.

The desk job gives him time to romance feisty nurse Lt. Maggie Haines (Patricia Haines) who has the cojones to take charge of the budding relationship. She happens to share an apartment with another nurse, the much younger Ensign Annalee Dorne (Jill Dorne) who is dating entitled Ensign Jeremiah Torrey (Brandon de Wilde), Rock’s estranged son.

Jeremiah works for slimy glory-hunter Commander Neal Owynn (Patrick O’Neal), a former U.S. Congressman using his political skills to worm his way into the office of by-the-book Vice Admiral Brodick (Dana Andrews). Rock shares his apartment with Commander Egan Powell (Burgess Meredith), a thrice-married playboy, high up in Navy intelligence.

Rock’s second-in-command is Commander – junior to a captain in case you don’t understand the U.S. Navy ranking system – Paul Eddington, a hothead whose mourning for dead wife Liz (Barbara Bouchet) results in him also being reduced to a desk job and exiled to the Pacific. On the fringes of the story are Lt. Commander “Mac” MacConnell (Tom Tryon) and pregnant wife Beverley (Paula Prentiss).

How all these characters enmesh is the consequence of a quite brilliant screenplay by Wendell Hayes (Advise and Consent, 1962). Rockwell and Eddington both seek redemption, the former to prove his Naval worth and regain the affection of his son, the latter to absolve himself for his terrible actions.

You can always tell the hero in war films because they are so rarely a physical casualty of war, all the others are killed and wounded but hardly ever the hero, so it takes something for the Hollywood Hero of the Century to play a character who is wounded not once but twice, and for the early part of the picture walks around with his arm in his sling (not quite an echo of the way he holds his arm in The Searchers, but evoking the same internal conflict).

The only supposed out-and-out hero is MacConnell, but his inaction at the beginning of the movie fails to prevent the death of Eddington’s wife. And his heroism largely takes place off-screen and it’s worth noting that Rock doesn’t raise a rifle or pistol in anger (or even get into a punch-up as was the actor’s wont in other films). Being in charge he’s removed from the core action even if suffering the consequences of battle. In a marvellous touch of irony, Rockwell is the most passive hero to hit the screen. It’s an incredibly bold and self-confident director who would even think of luring audiences into an action picture starring the Hero of the Century and then denying him a single moment of screen glory.

Much has been written about the cinematic arc John Ford took in the beginning and ending of The Searchers, the symbolic opening and closing of doors, but since Preminger is long out of critical favor nobody’s has bothered to notice how much of this film concerns cinematic echo.

To take the most obvious example, the first witnesses of the airborne Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor are illicit pair Liz Eddington and her paramour (Hugh O’Brian) and towards the end it’s her husband Paul, by this point guilty of horrendous behaviour, who leads the airborne fightback against the enemy.

A beach – where Liz and escort make love – is how the director initially pushes the audience towards sympathising with the drunken Eddington. A beach is where we later learn to despise him, as he brutally rapes Ensign Dorne. And it doesn’t take much to work out that his wife’s exuberant wildness explains Eddington’s initial attraction to her, not realising that psychologically it provides him with an excuse for his own darker wildness, initially restricted to self-destruction but when it truly emerges it’s to the detriment of an innocent.

And that’s before we get on to Rockwell as the messenger of death, delivering the bad news to wives, and then being on the receiving end after his son dies in battle. And finally, the political peace-time high-ups get their come-uppance in actual war.

It’s insulting – as some have suggested – that the performance of John Wayne (The Hellfighters, 1968) is the result of undiagnosed cancer when in fact this is a finely nuanced role of a high-ranking figure living out in his life in regret, at times quite shamefaced about abandoning his son at a very early age. Preminger cracked down on Wayne’s habit of splitting his lines in two, so those typical pauses we have come to expect are in large part gone, and it helps the movie’s pacing. For most of the movie the character is saddled with consequence. That passivity that the director saw as essential to the role is virtually present all the time.

Preminger wrings a different performance, too, from Kirk Douglas (A Lovely Way to Die, 1968), equally laden with regret, but not enough to prevent him lashing out and the actor is accorded two quite stunning scenes, the first as he broods in silence over his wife, but for the second, prior to raping Ensign Dorne, the stone-cold look on his face suggests a serial killer held at bay for too long and now about to explode.

Burgess Meredith (Hurry Sundown, 1967) is another brought to directorial heel, his more common scene-stealing and vowel-stretching also eliminated, but in exchange given a larger-than-life character on which to expend screen energy. The entire cast is good-to-excellent and it’s jam-packed: Patricia Neal (Hud, 1962), Tom Tryon (The Cardinal, 1964), Paula Prentiss (Man’s Favorite Sport, 1963), Brandon De Wilde (Shane, 1953), Jill Haworth (Exodus, 1960), Dana Andrews (The Satan Bug, 1965), Franchot Tone (Advise and Consent, 1962), Patrick O’Neal (Stiletto, 1969), George Kennedy (Cool Hand Luke, 1967), Henry Fonda (Battle of the Bulge, 1965), Barbara Bouchet (Danger Route, 1967) and Stanley Holloway (My Fair Lady, 1964) Many of the supporting cast were also playing against type – Prentiss as the young wife falling to pieces, Andrews and O’Neal as slippery political types, Holloway a guerrilla, and perhaps most interesting off Neal, not the typical woman left behind when the man goes off to war but, in her role as nurse, entering harm’s way herself.

And despite criticism of the miniatures used in sea scenes while that might have been obvious on the big screen you don’t notice it on the small screen. The action scenes are very well-done for the time, and quite unusual in that by and large it’s the Americans who appear shell-shocked not the enemy.

Cramming this much narrative into the overall arch of Pearl Harbor and retaliation against the Japanese, while bringing so many different characters to the fore with clear dramatic purpose is an amazing achievement, screenwriter Wendell Mayes (Advise and Consent) doing the heavy lifting in this department.

But Preminger the director is very much to the fore, in his composition and use of the camera for long tracking shots (a particular favorite of mine) such as at the beginning. A riveting watch full of splendid acting. Shooting it in black-and-white might have at one time appeared to date the picture but instead it has rendered it ageless. Five stars without a doubt.

Pressure (2026) **** – Now Streaming

The producers sure misread the public for this one. As every moviegoer knows, weather is for chaos and destruction. We’re talking cyclones, hurricanes, twisters, roaming icebergs, ships in distress, cities swamped or frozen. The clue is in the title – Twister (1996), Twisters (2024), The Perfect Storm (2000), Hurricane (1979). The clue in the title here would have driven audiences away. We’ve spent half our lives listening to weather forecasters talk about pressure, low or high apparently, without having a clue what they’re on about.

Which is a shame because the title here is dual purpose. Yes, it’s about the weather front that could wreck D-Day but it’s also about the mental gymnastics undergone by all the generals, admirals and backroom staff as the Allies prepare for the greatest invasion ever known. Key to a successful landing is the weather. Too much weather, i.e. waves a few feet higher, and the landing troops will be swept away.

The Yanks involved are unfamiliar with the English concept of the stiff upper lip so they just verbally let loose on anyone getting in their way, including Scottish weather kingpin James Stagg (Andrew Scott). He’s been drafted in as a counterbalance to the gung-ho American weather expert Irving Krick (Chris Messina) who has made any number of crucial interventions weather-wise, including not just the North African campaign but the filming of Gone with the Wind (1939).

Krick relies on history to make his calculations. If this happened in 1913 and 1931 with these conditions the consequences would be the same in 1944. James Stagg is not convinced. So that’s the first head-to-head battle. Luckily, Stagg isn’t the hapless kind of the backroom boy, and asserts his authority from the get-go.

But when Stagg’s calculations don’t go the way Allied Commander General Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) wants then he’s got a raging boss to deal with not to mention an arrogant General Bernard Montgomery (Damian Lewis) who somewhere along the way lost his stiff upper lip and lets it all hang out rather than, like his countrymen, reining it in.

So it’s the lowly (in comparative terms) weatherman sticking to his guns in the face of a roomful of Army and Navy chiefs, on top of which his wife is in hospital dangerous ill after a German bombing raid.

Krick isn’t above sneaky manoeuvres to attempt to put Stagg in his place, and the Scot might as well have had a target pinned to his back for all the verbal abuse he takes. But his refusal to give way ranks with all the resilient greats over the centuries who had resisted taking the easy route and stood up for his principals and incessant belief that he is right and that if the bosses take any other action Germany will win the war. The stakes, let’s just say, couldn’t be higher.

Luckily, Eisenhower isn’t one to be persuaded by self-serving charlatans. He’s an interesting study here, well aware that he’s in charge of the greatest military show on earth while never having led an army into battle before. He is plagued with doubt as well. And his adulterous relationship with his assistant Kay Summersby (Kerry Condon) isn’t glossed over either, nor, interestingly, is he inclined to let romance get in the way of hard decisions.

In fairness, this is more of a chamber piece and opening up what began as a stage play to show ships in battle and the other actionable elements of D-Day isn’t really required and it might well have been better to scale down its ambitions because the inherent drama is more than enough.

Andrew Scott (Ripley TV series, 2024) comes out on top precisely because he’s got to rein it all in but Brendan Fraser (Rental Family, 2025) is convincing and, luckily, Kerry Condon (F1 The Movie, 2025) is giving more to do than just mop Eisenhower’s brow.

So, basically, it’s a very well-written and very well-acted drama. Directed by Andrew Maras (Hotel Mumbai, 2018) and co-written by him with David Haig, better known as an actor, who wrote the original play.

I saw this on the big screen but didn’t review it at the time. It’s not taken long to get into streaming. You can catch it on Apple and Amazon and others.

On the Fiddle / Operation Snafu (1961) ***

Unassuming but undeniably charming British World War Two comedy denied U.S. release until four years later when a savvy distributor jumped on the James Bond bandwagon. Primarily of interest these days for the opportunity to see a pre-Bond Sean Connery (Dr No, 1962) in action its merit chiefly lies in ploughing the same furrow, though with a great deal less pomposity and self-consciousness, as the later The Americanization of Emily (1964), of the coward backing into heroism.

Horace Pope (Alfred Lynch) is a scam merchant who only dodges prison by enlisting. Assigned to the RAF he teams up with Pedlar Pascoe (Sean Connery) and they embark on a series of schemes designed to keep them as far away from the front line as possible. It’s hardly an equal partnership, Pope dreams up the fiddles while Pascoe just falls in with them. It’s not dumb and dumber but a collaboration that goes no further back in the annals of movies than brain and brawn.

*Needless to say, the movie lacks the the damsels in bikinis which were a prerequisite of the Bond pictures. Sean Connery takes top billing Stateside where he was originally behind Lynch.*

It’s certainly a cynical number, reflecting the boredom experienced by many of the Armed Forces backroom staff, the administrators whose inefficiency turns them into easy dupes, and the determination of soldiers to take advantage of every opportunity to bend the rules. It takes the unusual position of presenting the ordinary soldier as smart and every officer as a numbskull, an approach that would only have been possible 15 years after the war ended and in marked contrast to the determined heroism of other British war films – such intrepid stiff-upper-lip behavior a hallmark of the British version of the genre.

First stop is to run an operation issuing leave passes – for a price – and the sheer effrontery exhibited by Pope is a joy to behold. Next up is selling stolen meat on the black market.

While Pedlar is the wide-eyed camp follower, and more likely to forever sit on the sidelines, cheerful but shy, and only a few pratfalls away from being a bumbling idiot, they do make a good team. Being sent to France is more of a heaven-sent opportunity to increase their bankrolls than a hazardous wartime mission as Pope sells rations to the French. Eventually, of course, their various scams are rumbled and they are forced into battle.

*The only thing better than one pre-Bond Connery picture is two.*

The movie switches a bit more deftly into serious mode than the aforementioned The Americanization of Emily mostly because these are actual soldiers trained to be soldiers rather than an officer who landed a cushy number and whose main effort is to avoid combat. War is presented as horrific rather than comedy and it must have been the same experience for an ordinary soldier at the time, after months of inactivity suddenly thrust into the cauldron.

The picture moves at a brisk pace and is continually amusing if not particularly laugh-out-loud. You’ve probably seen most of the set-ups before but they are reinvented with an appealing freshness and briskness As a bonus there’s reams of British character actors and comedians – plus token American Alan King (who would appear in Connery starrer The Anderson Tapes, 1971) – along the way. The term “snafu” in case you’re interested, has a similar meaning to the “fubar” of Saving Private Ryan (1998).

Alfred Lynch (The Hill, 1965) doesn’t milk the Cockney patter overmuch and he’s got a greater international screen appeal than the likes of the more English Sid James (Carry On films) or Norman Wisdom. Think a shiftier Sgt Bilko, if the Phil Silvers creation could be any more untrustworthy.

Connery’s performance is well worth a watch as a prelude to what was to come once his roles were tailor-made. He is an effortless scene-stealer, gifted in expressing emotion through his eyes, and although verbally Lynch dominates it’s difficult to take your eyes off Connery.

The roll-call of character actors includes Cecil Parker (A Study in Terror, 1965), Stanley Holloway (My Fair Lady, 1964), John Le Mesurier (The Moon-Spinners, 1964), Graham Stark (The Wrong Box, 1966) and Victor Maddern (The Lost Continent, 1968).

Cyril Frankel (The Trygon Factor, 1966) comfortably cobbles this together from a screenplay by Harold Buchman (The Lawyer, 1970, and who had ironically enough penned the picture Snafu in 1945) based on the novel Stop at a Winner by R.F. Delderfield.

When the box office supremacy of the Bond pictures was underscored by the reissue of the Dr No/From Russia with Love double bill in 1965, distributors, as had been their wont, racked the vaults for anything featuring Connery that could be re-sold to a willing public.

While there is a readily available DVD, this turns up on a regular basis, in Britain at least, on television.

Captain Newman M.D. (1963) ****

Somewhat lost in the rush to acclaim star Gregory Peck for his Oscar-winning To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), this bold attempt to tackle mental illness among the armed forces deserves reassessment.

Set towards the end of World War Two, psychiatrist Captain Newman (Gregory Peck) heads up a unit addressing the previously ignored mental health issues of U.S. airmen. One of the first to identify post- traumatic stress disorder, Newman employs a whole raft of unusual techniques such as allowing his clients to tend sheep. And he’s not above using romantic sleight-of-hand to woo Lt. Corum (Angie Dickinson), a nurse in a non-psychiatric department, to join his team. Orderly Corporal Leibowitz (Tony Curtis), more of a con artist than a medical professional, is the other key member of the team.

As you might expect, Newman has to battle superiors to allow him to even attempt to cure any of the men under his care since in standard armed forces opinion they are really just cowards trying to duck out of their duty. Given there’s no prescribed treatment for his clientele, Newman basically improvises on a case-by-case basis to get to the heart of what caused mental collapse.

While the movie motors along nicely on the interplay between these three characters – the potential for real romance between Newman and Corum and Newman’s acceptance of Leibowitz’s alternative, more down-to-earth and decidedly un-medical approach – it focuses on three critical cases. Col Bliss (Eddie Albert) suffers from split personality, Capt Winston (Robert Duvall) is catatonic and Corporal Tompkins (Bobby Darin) too bubbly by far.

In dealing with each, Newman adopts a different persona, occasionally entering into the make-believe world of his clients to expose how much of a fiction they are. Stern with some, he is gentle with others and when he appears to go over the score explains he is not shouting at a person but at his symptoms.

And while at time it feels like a mental equivalent of episodes of a hospital soap, the underlying drive, the knowledge that men are hiding from the horrors of war or endure guilt over action they may have taken or are unable to face the consequence of orders they carried out takes this into a different level. Almost all suffer from the standard conviction that they must be cowards. Newman’s task is to make all face up to their fears.

*Presumably to overcome fears of audience resistance to the downbeat subject matter, the U.S. poster plain misled the public – “love, laughter and tears” were not much in evidence.*

And it’s Corum’s self-appointed job to get under Newman’s skin and in so doing get to the heart of the terrible irony of his role. If he fails and men are discharged without being cured they will be returned to their units while mentally unstable and make decisions that could endanger thousands of men. If he succeeds, he sends men back to face potential death.

Luckily, it’s far from dour. Instead of taking the audience down a medical jargon rabbit-hole, the movie sensibly concentrates of character and humanity. It is filled with brilliant dialogue and whenever Newman appears overwhelmed up pops Leibowitz like the self-appointed class clown to bring events to a cheerier conclusion. Up till the end – a Xmas show by inmates and the arrival of a bunch of Italian POWs – the movie steers well clear of sentimentality and delivers a lucid exploration of the effects of war on the human psyche.

Gregory Peck (Mirage, 1965) is outstanding, not just from the way he adapts his character to suit the situation, but because quite a lot of his role is just to react to what is being said. Most stars would run a mile from being on the receiving end of chunks of dialog and insist on altering the script to make them appear more dynamic. Unlike Atticus Finch who is convinced he can find a solution, Newman knows his detection skills are very basic.

Tony Curtis (The Boston Strangler, 1968) might appear as if inhabiting a custom-made role suited to his natural effervescence and charm, but this is a deeper character than initially seems the case and rather than ride along and enjoy himself he has spells of challenging Newman’s authority. It’s a more subdued role for Angie Dickinson (Jessica, 1962), too, but she also brings a level of seriousness to the part and is integral to the picture’s success.

Bobby Darin (Pressure Point, 1962) was Oscar-nominated but I found his acting over-the-top. Eddie Albert (Green Acres television series 1965-1971) and Robert Duvall (To Kill a Mockingbird), in particular, were more assured. Look out for James Gregory (The Secret War of Harry Frigg, 1968) and former child star Jane Withers.

David Miller (Hammerhead, 1968) strikes the correct tone, leavening the seriousness with humor, but not avoiding the deeper issues. In their final screenplay assignment Henry and Phoebe Ephron (Carousel, 1956), parents of Nora Ephron (When Harry Met Sally, 1989), teamed with Richard L. Breen (A Man Could Get Killed, 1966) for an intelligent screenplay based on the bestseller by Leo Rosten.

The Americanization of Emily (1964) ****

It’s an immoral job but someone’s got to do it. In wartime, generals need their perks – Winston Churchill with his cigars and champagne the best advocate. And those who supply the perks – Dog-Robbers in American parlance – expect their own perks in the form of a backroom job where they are never exposed to danger. Top U.S. Navy dog-robber in World War Two London on the eve of D-Day is Lt. Commander Edison (James Garner) who can spirit up whisky, steaks, nylon stockings and women, happy even to deliver shoulder massages for boss Admiral Jessop (Melvyn Douglas).

And like the recently-reviewed The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) what’s mostly on the minds of top commanders is jostling for power, how to win the public relations battle on D-Day and prevent the politicians considering scrapping the service post-war. So Jessup comes up with a brilliant wheeze. What if the first man to die on Omaha Beach was a sailor? Allowing for the construction of a memorial to the “unknown sailor,” a feasible proposition given the Navy demolition unit is scheduled to land on French shores in advance of the invasion force. Edison is enlisted to film the anticipated death.

But Edison, whose brother died at Anzio, is a coward and does everything possible to avoid the job. He struggles to get English girlfriend Emily (Julie Andrews), whose father and brother died in the war, to share his perspective and is counting on buddy Lt. Commander Cummings (James Coburn) to get him out of it. But Cummings has his own ideas and Edison ends up the sacrificial lamb.

And it would be a brilliant black comedy except that, in the interests of a happy ending, Edison, despite being shot on the beach by Cummings, turns up alive.

In that case it becomes a fascinating exploration of the realities of war, the moral and immoral coming to grief in a moral vacuum that ensures that the higher up the food chain the less likelihood there is of dying and, ironically enough, the better opportunity to enjoy, while the masses are on strict rations, the good things of life. Emily would act as the movie’s conscience except that Edison is having none of war’s hypocrisy. He doesn’t want to die for his country and may be following to the letter General Patton’s dictat of making the “other poor bastard die for his country.” He doesn’t so much take a stand against the absurdities of war as stand up for the sanctity of life, in particular his own life, unwilling to fall for the “futile gesture of virtue.”

There’s plenty of what you should and shouldn’t do during wartime, arguments passionately argued for and against duty, though even the self-appointed conscience Emily stops short of turning her nose up at the finer things of life, no matter by what dodgy means they fall her way. that her life teeters on hypocrisy is scarcely explored.

And it does its utmost not to fall into the trap of the wartime romance genre, will-he-won’t-he survive the dangerous mission, precisely because you could never mistake Edison for a hero. And you need a hero not an ordinary joe for that particular genre to work. So what you’re left with is something else entirely, a man brave enough to be seen naked, exhibiting exactly the same lack of scruples in saving his own life as his commanders would employ to have him lose it. It’s kind of complicated that way.

Throw in another get-out clause on behalf of the Allied command, the notion that no high-up would embark on such a selfish vainglorious action, and that Jessup only does so because he is temporarily unhinged after the loss of his wife, when in fact history is littered with generals committing troops to wholesale slaughter for their own reasons.

Ediuon is such a charming character that if you wanted someone to plead the case on behalf of the cowardly you couldn’t make a better choice. The whole idea shouldn’t work at all because it’s only the bad guys, the shifty ones that turn up in every war movie, who carry the cowardice flag. The film is so cleverly structured, with examples of the impact of loss all around, that it’s virtually impossible to vote against Edison. And part of the cleverness is the casting. If such a good egg as Emily can fall in love with Edison it somehow makes him a less despicable character. He’s certainly not as shifty as Jessup who dreamed up the bizarre stunt in the first place or Cummings, intent on exploiting it.

James Garner (36 Hours, 1964) excelled at playing the morally dubious, the cowardly sheriff played for laughs in Support Your Local Sheriff (1969) his biggest box office hit, but this isn’t far short of his very best work, and an exceptionally bold role for a star. Julie Andrews was already trying to move away from her goody-two-shoes debut in Mary Poppins (1965) that would be further enhanced by The Sound of Music (1965) and while her characterisation is not, on the surface, that far away from either role, the depth she displays here, the sorrow and the soulfulness, give this a edgier riff.

Good support from James Coburn (Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round, 1966), Melvyn Douglas (Hotel, 1967), Keenan Wynn (Man in the Middle/The Winston Affair, 1964) and Joyce Grenfell (The Yellow Rolls Royce, 1964).

Director Arthur Hiller (Tobruk, 1967) most of the time walks a very fine line but manages to create a very thoughtful movie that humanized what other anti-war pictures failed to make personal. Oscar-winner Paddy Chayefsky (Marty, 1955) based the screenplay on the bestseller by William Bradford Huie (Wild River, 1960).

Another in the mini-genre concerning power politics in the Armed Forces. Would make a good triple bill if teamed with The Charge of the Light Brigade and Man in the Middle.

I Deal in Danger (1966) ***

Crooner Robert Goulet, winner of the 1963 Grammy for best new star, was going down a familiar route of transition to the big screen. Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, Oscar-winners both, had led the line for singers who made it big in films. And they wouldn’t be the last – Barbra Streisand (Funny Girl, 1968), Kris Kristofferson (Convoy, 1978), Jennifer Lopez (Hustlers, 2019) and Lady Gaga (Joker: Folie a Deux, 2024) would also achieve the crossover.

Goulet has the looks and delivery to fit into the burgeoning espionage market, though this is set in World War Two. As well as action, it is packed full of crises to be overcome, double agents, triple agents, dirty tricks, and clever maneuvers. You never know which way it’s going to go at any given moment.

David March (Robert Goulet) is an American double agent who has infiltrated the Third Reich at a very high level – he acts as a kind of Lord Haw-Haw, predicting the Germans will come out on top and sneering at Allied efforts to stop them. But he’s under suspicion from Gestapo officer Elm (Werner Peters) who’s convinced the Yank is the last of an 18-strong espionage operation called Blue Light.

Having passed on information to the Allies, via a hole in a bar of soap, about the Germans working on a new secret weapon, March is later tasked with destroying it. But first he has to deal with another Yank traitor, Spauling (Donald Herron),who, ostensibly, could break March’s cover. Instead, it turns out Spauling’s job is to sacrifice himself to enhance March’s cover.

March is horrified at the prospect of having to shoot his old friend stone dead, even if Spauling is suffering from an incurable illness and only has weeks to live, so more like a mercy killing than murder. Instead, with a clever ruse, March turns the tables on Elm, convincing his own colleagues that the Gestapo officer is the last member of Blue Light, leaving March in the clear to concentrate on sabotage.

Naturally, as a spy, he must have an affair and who better than with fellow double agent Suzanne (Christine Carere) who convinced the Germans she was a collaborator after her French father, a World War One hero, was hanged by his own countrymen in World War Two.

So now we’re into The Heroes of Telemark (1965)/The Guns of Navarone (1961) territory except the secret weapon is a submarine that can cross the Atlantic fitted with enough missiles to take the USA out of the war without going to all the bother of an invasion.

But the sabotage operation is far from straightforward. March and Suzanne enrol in their mission German scientist Gretchen (Eva Pflug), whose scientist father has been denounced by the Germans but, in one of the best scenes, draws the line at treachery. And soon Gretchen has qualms about betraying her colleagues. Suspicious guards foil March’s attempts to smuggle in items essential to explosions. March’s own principles are called into question.

And with his initial plans hampered, March aims for implosion rather than explosion, turning the weapon on the factory building it.

Very passable entertainment and would have suited a marketplace desperate for the supporting material that could make up a decent double bill. You can’t quibble with Robert Goulet (I’d Rather Be Rich, 1964) especially as the espionage game threw up lots of worse actors. French actress Christine Carrere and German Eva Pflug bring a Continental air to proceedings while Werner Peters (Battle of the Bulge, 1965) continues his run of bad guys.

You might be more attracted by director Walter Grauman who helmed 633 Squadron (1964) and cult writer-director Larry Cohen (Black Caesar, 1973). This was, in fact, culled from four out of seven episodes of a US television series Blue Light (1966), created by Grauman and Cohen and swiftly re-edited to hit the overseas market.

Basically, a better class of B-picture.

De Gaulle: Resistance (2026) ***** – Seen at the Cinema

As far as the Brits and Americans were concerned the North African campaign of World War Two consisted of the former’s Field Marshal Montgomery knocking hell out of German General Rommel at El Alamein and the latter’s General Patton demolishing Panzer divisions at will. The fact that the British victory would not have occurred except for one largely forgotten battle has been completely ignored. The Brits were holed up in Tobruk with even less chance of escaping the combined German and Italian armies than at Dunkirk, no fleets of small boats likely to come to the rescue in the Mediterranean.

It took an incredible stand-off at a tiny desert post called Bir Hakeim to buy the British enough time to escape to Tobruk and regroup and eventually conquer Rommel at El Alamein.

Who inhabited this outpost and sacrificed thousands of lives? The nascent Free French Army of around 4,000 men, commanded by veteran General Koenig (Benoit Magimel,) with neither tanks nor airplanes holding out against the vastly superior forces of Rommel fully equipped with both tanks and airplanes.

Just one of the many nuggets in this totally absorbing film about the titular French general, exiled in London, who became the voice of French Resistance after Marshall Petain had surrendered to the invaders and set up the collaborative Vichy government.

It was a heck of a feat for De Gaulle because even in France nobody had a clue who he was. At the start of the war he was an insignificant colonel way down the pecking order and I doubt if any of the French people knew of his courageous counter-attack against the Germans. The Brits had even less of a clue about him and his arrogance certainly didn’t endear him to the British upper classes who were running the country.

Support for him among the various French officials living in London was negligible and for a good while he looked like a raving madman with his insistence that France had not surrendered. After the war, he was famously a thorn in the British side, and from this film you can see why as he was subjected to personal humiliation and betrayal by his supposed Allies. But he did have panache, chutzpah, and that was something Churchill, an old soldier himself, admired.

He launched what appeared the most bizarre offensive against the Germans, aiming to set off a tinderbox of revolt among the French colonies in Africa, beginning with Chad and Cameroon, hoping that such insurrection would spread to Dakar and Algiers on the North African coast and thus make it easier for the Allies to attempt a landing. Given that his forces on the ground numbered between one and six, this was either strategic genius or the work of a deluded lunatic.

Luckily, the colonies, thousands of miles away from the Germans, could ignore Petain and raise up the French flag in defense. The plan fell to pieces, however, when De Gaulle shot himself in the foot by refusing to allow the British Navy to attack Dakar since it was being held by French troops and he didn’t want to kill his own countrymen, as the British had done when it destroyed the French fleet to avoid it falling into German hands.

At various points, De Gaulle is stabbed in the back by Churchill and his own group in England, betrayed, exiled even in his exile, routinely treated as a nobody. He should have salvaged his reputation at Bir Hakeim, given the murderous action permitted the Brits to escape Tobruk, and while he was feted in the streets and praised in the British newspapers, he was still distrusted by the Allies and when Algiers was liberated it was collaborator Admiral Darlan (Mathieu Kassovitz) who was put in charge of all the French forces in Africa.

Luckily, there was a deus ex machine to hand, a young man called Fernand (Florian Lesieur), who appeared to interrupt general proceedings in the movie from time to time and whose sole role, it would appear, was to prove that there was resistance on the ground in Paris although at that point it merely took the form of demonstrations. Fernand was in many ways an echo of De Gaulle. When he first called upon Parisians to rise up in civil disobedience, only a handful responded. Later, he, too, entered exile, in Algiers. Fortunately, he was at hand to assassinate the French commander, leaving the way open for De Gaulle to regain command.

You’ll have to wait till Part Two of this epic epic (we’re talking nearly six hours in total) to discover what happened next.

You’ll find me in that audience. We’re familiar with Churchill’s struggles in World War Two, but although I knew De Gaulle was the self-proclaimed leader of the Free French, I had no idea who he was and what he actually did. In truth, the image most fixed in my mind about the man who later became the French President was that he was the guy who ducked to avoid an assassin’s bullet but that was merely a fiction – The Day of the Jackal.

A ton of this is just politics, but it’s the nerve-shredding politics of trying to hold your ground when you’re being hammered on all sides.

Simon Abkarin (Casino Royale, 2006) is superb in the title role, given the opportunity to express all sides of the General’s character – petulance, arrogance, cunning, loyalty, stoicism, determination, willpower, self-belief – and the moments when he realizes he is condemning his valiant Free French troops to death by insisting they do not attempt to escape Bir Hakeim, but fight a rearguard action to the bitter end (or until the British evacuated Tobruk), is immensely moving.

Simon Russell Beale (The Magic Faraway Tree, 2026) portrays the hard-drinking British leader, perplexed by De Gaulle’s behavior that threatens to ruin his relationship with the President Roosevelt (Campbell Scott). Florian Lesieur (Cassandre, 2024) has to touch on as many emotions as Abkarin. With Abkarin and Lesieur hogging the dramatic high notes, there’s not much room for another breakout performance but I suspect we’re going to see more of Anamaria Vartolomei (The Count of Monte Cristo, 2024) who plays Livia, the Jewish friend of Fernand.

Superbly directed by Antonin Baudry in only his second movie after The Wolf’s Call (2019). As much as we are looking in the direction of young bucks who can turn a million-dollar budget into sheer gold in horror pictures like Backrooms (2026), we should also be acknowledging someone who can handle a bigger-budgeted effort with such aplomb. He co-wrote the screenplay with Berenice Vale in her movie debut based on a book by Julian T. Jackson.

Exceptional. Highly recommended.

The Sea Wolves (1980) ***

Francis Ford Coppola and Michael Cimino between them put paid to the more traditional “high adventure” war picture. The realism of Apocalypse Now (1979) and The Deer Hunter (1978), which came out months apart and gobbled up critical appreciation and Oscar nominations, spelled a more troubled release for the likes of Alistair MacLean’s Force 10 from Navarone (1979) and The Sea Wolves, which in part followed the MacLean template.

However, The Sea Wolves has never been properly appreciated for one important element – a more realistic portrayal of age and its limitations than was common in Hollywood. We tend to take it for granted that actors when not portraying superheroes can still in the action line have a special set of skills that allows them to throw themselves about or run and chase as if they were men 30 years younger. Liam Neeson was 73 when he was still taking down bad guys in Ice Road: Vengeance (2025), Tom Cruise a decade younger in the final episode of the Mission Impossible franchise in 2025 and Keanu Reeves a year short of 60 when committed to acrobatic action in John Wick Chapter 4 (2023). Jason Statham will be 60 when the sequel to The Beekeeper arrives next year.

In the action world, age never seemed to catch up with or limit the heroes. In The Sea Wolves age is by far the biggest obstacle. The three pre-eminent heroes are played by actors aged between 52 and 71. Their characters are fallible.

SOE operatives Col Lewis Pugh (Gregory Peck) and Capt Gavin Stewart (Roger Moore), going undercover in neutral Goa in World War Two, prove unable to unravel the mystery that results in German submarines destroying British destroyers. Any time they get hold of a likely suspect, they have the bad habit of killing them. And Stewart, prone to over-indulgence in the opposite sex even in the midst of a critical operation, is duped by femme fatale Mrs Cromwell (Barbara Kellerman) who proves not only to be the German spy they are hunting but capable of knifing men to death.

It’s only because the pair fail in their initial mission that Pugh is forced to call on a rag-bag bunch of ageing ex-soldiers from India led by Col Grice (David Niven) and undertake a more difficult operation to infiltrate a Goa harbor, sink German ships and silence radio communication. This bunch are never going to complete the kind of training program served up to The Dirty Dozen (1967) or The Devil’s Brigade (1968) so that aspect is mostly treated for laughs.

Vulnerabilities abound. They are violently seasick en route or they can’t get the boat’s engine to work or are likely to mistake a distant shark for a U-boat.

And there’s another unusual aspect of war that complicates proceedings. In most war films – and a feature of the current The Odyssey (2026) – the dead are left behind. Here, because the British are attacking a neutral territory, they can’t leave behind evidence of their involvement in the shape of corpses or wounded.

The actual plan is clever. Any sailors or officials in the target harbor who could possibly interfere are rendered incapable by the simple trick of getting them all drunk, a move sponsored by the British government. The battle itself is too long in coming and there are too many supporting characters involved for us to be committed to any of them and therefore the emotional impact of their deaths is minimal.

Sufficient tension is still generated but given the battle action only lasts about 20 minutes rather than the 150 minutes of Where Eagles Dare (1968), for example, it doesn’t quite qualify for the high adventure sub-genre.

Even the greatest of directors would fail to make work an action movie based on the type of people who should never be allowed near a machine gun or asked to join in fisticuffs, so that element is indeed a stretch. On the other hand, the frailties of those involved, determined not to admit to weakness, make this work.

By this point Gregory Peck’s career had received a second (or third) wind thanks to The Omen (1976) and The Boys from Brazil (1978). Roger Moore’s career had been revitalized by James Bond and he had just made Moonraker (1979), his most successful contribution to the series. David Niven was not in their marquee league but anyone who remembered him from The Guns of Navarone (1961) would go in with high expectations. Barbara Kellerman (The Quatermass Conclusion, 1979) is up to scratch as the cunning spy.

There’s a host of British supporting stars including Trevor Howard (Von Ryan’s Express, 1965), Patrick Macnee (The Avengers TV series 1961-1969), Patrick Allen (Puppet on a Chain, 1971) and Kenneth Griffith (The Lion in Winter, 1968).

Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen (Where Eagles Dare) from a script by Reginald Rose (Twelve Angry Men, 1957) based on the novel by James Leasor which recounted a true incident.

Not quite in the top drawer of the high adventure sub-genre but if you accept the approach and view this as something of an antidote to the standard war film you will find much to appreciate.

The Guns of Navarone (1961) *****

To celebrate this film now streaming on Netflix I thought i’d re-run a previous review.

Stone-cold action classic that blazed a trail for the big-budget men-on-a-mission war picture like The Dirty Dozen (1967) and Where Eagles Dare (1968). Brilliantly structured, written and directed, and featuring a sea battle, storm, shipwreck, mountaineering, chase, interrogation scenes, infiltration of an impregnable fortress, a pair of romances, two traitors, and an awe-inspiring climax make this a candidate for one of the greatest war pictures ever made.

The set-up is simple. Knock out the gigantic guns at Navarone or two thousand men will perish. It’s mission impossible and the clock is ticking. You don’t know who to trust and the enemy is ruthless.

In the early days of the all-star-cast, producer Carl Foreman rounded up an astonishing line-up, bulking out the bestseller by Scottish thriller maestro Alistair Maclean (The Secret Ways, 1961) with three top stars in five-time Oscar nominee Gregory Peck (The Big Country, 1958), double Oscar-winner Anthony Quinn (Heller in Pink Tights, 1960) and Oscar-winner David Niven (Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, 1960). Add in British household names Anthony Quayle (Ice Cold in Alex, 1958), Stanley Baker (The Concrete Jungle, 1960) and James Robertson Justice (Doctor in Love, 1960), a sprinkling of rising stars in James Darren (Let No Man Write My Epitaph, 1960), Gia Scala (I Aim at the Stars, 1960) and Richard Harris (The Night Fighters, 1960) and renowned Greek actress Irene Papas (Antigone, 1961).

Each man is a specialist. Capt. Mallory (Gregory Peck) the mountaineer whose climbing skills are essential to completing the fist part of the mission, explosives expert Corporal Miller (David Niven), mechanic ‘Butcher’ Brown (Stanley Baker), Greek patriot Stavrou (Anthony Quinn) and the ruthless killer Pappadimos (James Darren) who has the contact with the Greek resistance. The stakes are ramped up when we learn both Mallory and Stavrou have bounties on their heads, not to mention the fact they are sworn enemies, and that before the mission even gets under way, spies are discovered in the camp. The ostensible leader of the group Major Franklin (Anthony Quayle) is wounded early on, turning him into a liability and making Mallory the de facto leader.

The stakes are ramped up further – this time through relationships. Their Greek contact turns out to be a woman, Maria (Irene Papas), brother of Pappadimos. She brings with her a mute girl Anna (Gia Scala) for whom Mallory develops romantic feelings while Stavrou has eyes for Maria. Mallory is also torn about Franklin, his best friend.

And from there it pitches into one disaster after another. They are too easily hunted by the Germans. They are shelled with mortars and attacked by dive bombers as they race across open mountains and through caves to reach their destination. They have to shoot their way out of traps and finagle their way into the fortress. There are twists and turns all the way, the clock ticking in almost James-Bond-style as the deadline for the destruction of the troops approaches.

And although this is clearly a war picture it is also as obviously an anti-war one, no end to the killing in sight, people dying pointlessly.

Although the acting was ignored come Oscar time, each of the stars delivers and it is a communal tour de force. Director J. Lee Thompson (Ice Cold in Alex) ensures that in visual terms none of the stars dominates, each given equal screen time while the strong supporting cast each has their own narrative arc. With over two-and-half-hours’ running time, Thompson has both the bonus of time to allow each element to be fully played out and the problem of keeping the picture taut and he succeeds brilliantly in both aims. It is a masterpiece of suspense. And it looked fabulous, the guns themselves, by which the picture might succeed or fail, were awesome.

Thompson was Oscar-nominated as was producer Carl Foreman for both Best Picture and the screenplay, Dmitri Tiomkin for the score (one of the longest-ever), John Cox for sound, Alan Osbiston for editing. Bill Warrington who did the visual special effects and Chris Greenham who did the sound effects were the only winners on the night.

It was a commercial smash, top picture of the year in the U.S., the biggest picture of all time at the British box office and breaking records all over the world.

The Bridge at Remagen (1969) ****

Superior war film, somewhat underrated. Not just realistic battle scenes, but realistically weary soldiers and taking an even-handed approach to war in the manner of Battle of the Bulge (1965). The Americans want to destroy the bridge to trap 75,000 German soldiers on the wrong side of the Rhine, the German Major Krueger (Robert Vaughn) overrides his orders to also destroy the bridge and prevent the Allies with a direct route to Berlin. Instead with depleted forces – think Zulu (1963) – and hugely outnumbered he attempts to keep the bridge open so the cornered Germans can escape.

Unlike most war films there’s no time for comedy to lighten the spirits, it’s gruelling non-stop action. Even when the advance company, headed by grizzled Lt. Hartman (George Segal) find an abandoned village where the exhausted squad could rest up for a bit, they are ordered to keep going until they find more enemy to engage. Unlike the humane Krueger, the Allied high command are merciless, gung-ho Major Barnes (Bradford Dillman) and glory-hunter Brigadier Shinner (E.G. Marshall) drive their troops on, the latter not bothered how many of his men die in an attempt to blow up the bridge – “it’s a crap shoot” is the closest he gets to apology, claiming his actions will shorten the war.

When Allied attempts to blow the bridge fail and with the enemy so close Krueger has to proceed with detonating the explosives littering the bridge and that plan is also scuppered, it’s a battle to the death to secure the crossing. And the story itself is accentuated by nods to the grisly cost of war – on both sides. Heartless Sgt Gazzaro (Ben Gazzaro), whose freebooting Hartman despises, is brought up short when he kills a youth commandeered into action by Krueger in a bid to bolster his meagre outfit – barely 200 men when he expected a force of around 1600. Krueger is sickened to see a German firing squad executing deserters, but has little sympathy for an innkeeper who has lost a son to the fighting when four million Germans are already dead.

While reining in the worst excesses of Angelo, preventing him taking advantage of a captured woman (Anna Gael) and refusing himself to accept her offer of sex, Hartman does not rail (like Patton, 1970) against those of his men who succumb to pressure. Finding one soldier collapsed, he sympathizes, “sometimes it hits you like that,” and he refuses to put his men in unnecessary line of fire, prompting Barnes into almost killing him. Unlike Battle of the Bulge, however, there is no arrogant German commander (like Robert Shaw) nor complacent Americans.

The action is not only non-stop but hectic and the film begins brilliantly with tracking cameras scarcely able to keep up with American tanks barrelling along the road and aerial shots showing the destruction of another bridge over the Rhine. American tanks and German artillery exchange fire over the river. Buildings are blown out or majestically collapse (turns out these were real buildings, not mock-ups). Bridge stanchions fall in slow motion into the water. Refugees are collateral damage, the camera hardly registering a crying child or an abandoned doll.

As in the best war pictures, strategy and tactics are laid out for the audience, the American blunderbuss approach compares poorly to Krueger’s desperate attempts to utilise every advantage to the point of arming a barge in the river. Hartman and Krueger are well-matched in courage, the former thrown endlessly into action by cynical superiors, the latter, having discharged himself from hospital to fight on, landed with the task of rallying defeatist troops, and leading them into harm’s way in a manner that the American’s immediate superior, Barnes, point-blank refuses to do. Pride drives on the German, the war is almost lost, but surrender would be tantamount to humiliation. All Hartman has to fall back on is an inner core and the chain of command, soldiers obey orders.

Both George Segal (The Quiller Memorandum, 1966) and Robert Vaughn (The Venetian Affair, 1966) are well outside their acting comfort zone. Two stars whose hallmarks are cocky characters and suave charm turn into determined men who barely crack a smile. Segal has done cynical before but not to this degree and what catches the eye more is his sheer physical exhaustion. This is an early career highlight for Vaughn, rarely offered such juicy roles.

Although associated in the general audience mind for playing creepy, not to mention sleazy, characters, Ben Gazzara (Capone, 1975) had not made much impact on 1960s moviegoers, and beyond a handful of supporting roles best known to Americans for a starring role in television series Arrest and Trial (1963-1964). The general untrustworthy screen persona he would come to inhabit is given a good work-out here except for two scenes where his character takes unselfish action. Bradford Dillman, also best known for television (Court Martial, 1965-1966), portrays a largely one-dimension character lifted out of the ordinary in a couple of scenes.

E.G. Marshall (The Defenders, 1961-1965) and Peter Van Eyck (Station Six Sahara, 1963) are the opposing commanders. You can also spot Hans Christian Blech (Battle of the Bulge), Anna Gael (Therese and Isabelle, 1968), Sonja Zieman (The Secret Ways, 1961) and Bo Hopkins (The Wild Bunch, 1969).

John Guillermin (The Blue Max, 1966) directs with aplomb from a screenplay by William Roberts (The Devil’s Brigade, 1968) and novelist Richard Yates (Revolutionary Road, 2008) in his only work for the screen.