Nancy Wake, the White Mouse

I'd not heard of Nancy Wake until I stumbled upon this tv film on YouTube history documentaries. Well aware of the SOE missions flown to France launched from Tangmere airfield in West Sussex, including those of Violette Szabo ( see Carve her name with Pride 1958 film ). I found this account of Nancy Wake's wartime life a fascinating watch despite the interrupting verbal interjections from her biographer etc. It was reasonably well executed despite a average script in places, but hey, Nancy's exploits far outshine my critical nit-picking. Worth a watch as she contributed to give us all valuable peacetime today.

I enjoyed this film. There are few films about the S.O.E. and even fewer about women in the S.O.E. So it was a treat to see the story of a real hero of WWII.

Rachael Lampied stars as Nancy Wake, a French Resistance Agent during the Third Reich's occupation of France. It's sad that Germans and the Third Reich were made out to be villainous, but that's Hollywood. She was from New Zealand, my old country. I took a vacation there in March of 2001, decided to stay and returned to the States in November 2011. The fair-haired Rachael looks amazing as a brunette. There's nothin' like a dame! 💃🏻

I'm watching Nancy Wake: Gestapo's Most Wanted, a 2014 production about the incredibly brave and awe-inspiring heroine from New Zealand who courageously helped the French Resistance first hand in France during WWII. Her story is remarkable and deserves EVeryone's attention.

My problem is with this rather sketchy production. While the docudrama is decently told, there's one overwhelmingly glaring problem: the so-called eyewitness testimonies scattered throughout the film are by 50-60-70 year old men who claim they spoke with her and knew her, and worse ACT like they were there in WWII alongside her.

Nothing is or can be further from the truth. The film was made in 2014. She was born in 1912 (so she was about 28-33 during WWII). These supposed eye-witnesses were at most young children or WEREN'T EVEN BORN YET!!

While I understand these "eye-witness" are probably journalist-historians who interviewed her 50-60 years after the fact (she died in 2011), the fimmaker's representations that they "knew her" are eXtremely misleading. They knew her as a very, VeRY elderly lady. And while there's nothing wrong with that - nothing at all - something is Very Wrong (and unnecessary) in their attempts to mislead the viewer into believing they were there with her in WWII, when there is no possible way that could have been the case.

It's cheap.

Nancy Wake and her incredible story deserve far better.

Nancy's story deserves to be told, but not through deceptions like this. And for that reason in particular, I give this docudrama a rating of about 6.5/10.

As for Nancy Wake the war heroine, she deserves, oh.. at least about 100 out of 10 stars.~ pdb.

Whilst the story of Nancy Wake, WWII agent for the allies, is an interesting one, this production is only "OK".

Nancy Wake: the white mouse is one of the those docu drama's where people give "their opinions" of events alongside the dramatized story of Wakes time, in Nazi occupied Europe.

Regrettably the "insights", such as they are, are clumsily interjected, breaking up the flow of the actual drama itself. Imagine someone talking loudly in a cinema, offering their view of events, while you are trying to watch a film and you get the idea.

It would have been better, I believe, to have gotten the opinions out of the way up front and then move on to the story itself, without further interruption.

The acting is alright as are the sets but the narrative felt a bit forced and stilted. The action scenes are quite well done and entertaining.

In short, not a bad effort and to be fair, I suspect, on a nominal budget? That said, I felt, a lot more could have been accomplished with a simpler approach. Five out of ten from me.