Rose rosse per il führer

I was not happy with this film. We have seen it all before: a very extensive and difficult operation carried through with enormous troubles and consequences and ultimately resulting in nothing but a petty anticlimax. James Daly tries to make the best of it, several stars accompany him on the wild crusade or Via Crucis, Nino Castelnuovo and Pier Angeli for two, Peter van Eyck having a hard time with the cruel barbarity of SS with a worried Canaris in the background, while the one detail lighting up this sordid show is a dyspeptic priest, who succeeds well enough in introducing some vitally needed comedy. Gino Peguri provides some interesting music mainly inspired by Shostakovich's Leningrad symphony. For the rest, it's all self-destructive war business at its worst with a long bankruptcy list of casualties and no other result than unsurmountable solidly well founded bitterness. Expect the worst, and you will get it.

"Red Roses For The Fuhrer" or it's alternate title "Code Name, Red Roses" is not a bad film but previous sources listing this motion picture among Oscar-winner Ray Milland's credits are completely wrong.

Ray Milland is not in this film at all but was probably offered the role that was eventually accepted by Michael Wilding. As war movies go, this one is pretty entertaining with a fine cast including James Daly, Peter Van Eyck, Wilding, and Pier Angeli, who only got more beautiful as she matured. It also has plenty of action but no Ray Milland.

I was able to get a DVD from Canada, which obtained a Greek PAL VHS of the film in English with Greek sub-titles. Michael Wilding's voice is dubbed by someone else but Daly and Pier (actually billed under her real name of Anna Maria Pierangeli) dubbed their own voices for this Italian-German co-production.

Fernando Di Leo's directorial debut tells the story of a bunch of allies who land in occupied Belgium during WWII. The allies have to team up with the Belgian resistance to get a top secret allied memorandum back that fell into the hands of the Nazis. But the whole operation doesn't go on as planned at all, because there is a traitor within the resistance. During the quest for the memorandum, allies as well as Belgian resistance fighters and German Nazis are dropping like flies.

Di Leo succeeded in creating a remarkable war drama with an excessive body count (though almost no blood is spilt, because they didn't use any squibs - had they done so, it would have been easily the goriest war movie of its time). Di Leo also manages to show the senselessness of war in general, and the surprise ending shows once more that war only spreads victims and should be avoided at all costs. Still, the movie also delivers good entertainment and never becomes boring or pathetic. And even though there is almost no blood, it has its unpleasantly violent moments that work especially well on an emotional level. Interesting note for Italian film buffs: This movie also marks one of the first credits for Aristide Massacesi aka Joe D'Amato. Rating: 7 out of 10.