Against the Wind

First the good bits and that mainly centres around Simone Signoret, who as usual is excellent. But this poses a problem, for the "love-affair" of the film, which involves her and a young Gordon Jackson who looks and acts as though he had never been out of Cowdenbeath. So hardly the material to interest a sophisticated European lady as played by Ms. Signoret. Not good casting, indeed one of the more ridiculous romantic combinations in the history of motion pictures.

That being said the film, in black and white, has some atmosphere, tension and you feel that you are there, which is important. The rather bizarre casting continues, however, with the unlikely scenario of a rather elderly Jack Warner playing the part of a commando. Still if he was still an active policeman at 80 years of age in Dixon of Dock Green , who are we to argue with his credentials. In addition he is part of the two most memorable scenes in the film, one when he meets the Irish girl working for the Germans and secondly when he has to contend with a very angry Ms. Signoret holding a pistol.

James Robertson Justice is, as always, very believable as the organiser of the missions working from base and there are some good supporting actors who play around his character. For some reason the part played by John Slater irritated me from start to finish, though the rest of the cast, including Robert Beatty, were sound if a touch wooden.

I would summarise this film as a pleasant and nostalgic way to spend a rainy afternoon and if it is on sale for around £5 then worth a look.

I am a great fan of WWII movies, especially the ones concerning the resistance. To me, there is nothing better than a good film about the underground - British, Dutch, French, whatever, and "Against The Wind" is a good one. It takes a while to get going; there are many scenes setting up the planned rescue in Belgium and some time is spent on character development. A team of five are in the plan, and, of course, one is a double agent working for the Nazis.

As in many such movies, the Nazis are slow-witted bumblers, which always adds to my enjoyment even if a caricature. The action here is fast-paced and is in the second half of the picture and is one reason for my rating. The other reason is Simone Signoret, who I consider the best actress to ever grace the silver screen. She is aided and abetted by an able cast including Robert Beatty, Jack Warner and Gordon Jackson. If you are a fan of spy movies you should catch this one.

this is an excellent film of the mid Ealing period Critchton's tight direction and Bridgewaters music intertwined with each characters role in the film is truly marvellous! as time has passed all but one of the cast members have died, with the exception of Giselle Preville who plays Julie the wireless operator. i have watched this film many times and cannot get enough of the opening score by Bridgewater. i throughly recommend this film as an all time Ealing great, although many Ealing aficionados will probably not agree, as it received a very Luke warm reception in 1948 possibly due to public tiredness of all things to do with war.

Two years before Odette and a decade before Carve her Name with Pride, this film imagines a Special Operations Executive mission in Belgium. The SOE is not identified by name, and seems to be operating from a room inside the Natural History Museum instead of an office building on Baker Street, but many of the other elements are there - training in a country house, techniques of maintaining cover while on mission, and parachute jumps. There is even a workshop devising clever ways of concealing explosives - including dead rats and horse manure. Interesting to see so soon after the war what aspects of SOE, still now cloaked in secrecy more than half a century later, were seemingly well known. The workshop is also clearly a cinematic ancestor of Q's gadget factory in the Bond movies. One of the true to life aspects of this well scripted and directed (by Charles Crichton, better known for comedies The Lavender Hill Mob and The Titchfield Thunderbolt) film is the danger of being an agent in occupied Europe. Networks are vulnerable to betrayal (and one of the group we are introduced to in training turns out to be passing secrets to the Germans via an Irish contact) and the Gestapo are everywhere. People die, quite a lot of them, and suddenly. There is some dubious licence (Simone Signoret as Michèle operates a radio hidden in a sewing machine, which surely would have been vulnerable to detection, while John Slater as Emile has plastic surgery so effective his wife does not recognise him), but the story, while the characters and their mission are fictitious, seems to be informed by recent experience of the secret world. It is also ironic and poignant, in times of Brexit, to see again the common purpose of a bunch of foreigners in wartime England and the mortal risks they are prepared to take to liberate Europe from the Nazis. The women take roles equally as important as the men; which Gordon Jackson's character, who is drafted in from the explosive factory, is a bit stuffy about. Robert Beatty plays Father Elliot, a French-Canadian Catholic priest who is sent in to Belgium liberate an agent called Andrew (played by the Austrian actor Peter Illing) who has been caught after blowing up an archive office. James Robertson Justice, who would later play a similar role in The Guns of Navarone, is the mastermind in the museum back in London. His description of what his group does is as good a description of SOE as you get in movies portraying its activities: 'We collect all kinds of queer fish in this organisation, people who would never be taken for saboteurs. We send them back to school to learn all the things they were thrashed for - cheating and deceiving, pretending to be everything they are not. Playing rough games and dirty tricks.' Maurice Buckmaster, head of SOE in France who appears at the beginning of Odette, could hardly have put it better. The dramatic licence of the conclusion stretches credibility a bit far, and the constant background music gets a bit overpowering at times. But the strong cast of actors get well developed and believable characters to work with and Against the Wind is one of the better examples of its genre, even though it is one of the first.

Despite the usual budgetary restrictions, this manages to convey a sense of the danger and great sacrifice made by these brave people who fought for our freedom. Charles Crichton brings out the human story rather than the all-action tale of some movies. Scenes with John Slater visiting his wife seems slightly corny now, but then must have seemed so close to events (just 3 years after the end of WW2). And the outcome later makes it all the more poignant. I thought a movie like this would be good to show in schools, as a part of history lesson. I love all those character actors they were part of my childhood, and they were such real actors and people. (Take note Arnold, et al) And I still haven't got over Jack Warner's Max (our own Dixon of Dock green) who would have adam 'n' eved it!