The Next of Kin

You're transported back to 1942. You, yourself are sitting in a cinema praying to God that you have personally not caused the deaths of hundreds of people. This isn't just a movie, it's a vital life or death message you need to heed.

These days we're familiar with spy stories. We've seen so many of those films that we know the tricks of the trade. To us now its hammer over the head approach in getting the message across seems oddly unsubtle but this was aimed at a 1942 population. The audience back then didn't have our experience, they didn't know what we now know. Without wanting to sound patronising, they did need educating, they needed to be told. The pitfalls of having loose lips had to be spelled out in black and white.

This isn't like a normal picture but neither is it a dry preachy lecture on how to behave. The filmmakers knew what they were doing: they knew how to engage with their audience, they knew they had to make this both informative, exciting and above all else, entertaining. It's very different to most wartime morale boosting movies, in fact as Churchill noted, it's quite depressing. That's what is so powerful about it - if you aren't careful, you, yes you might personally plunge the world into a living nightmare.

Besides being a genuinely entertaining piece of cinema, it's a genuinely important piece of history, an actual part of the war effort which we can now experience for ourselves.

This film's message was so important and serious that it was originally intended by the authorities in wartime Britain for military circulation only. However, the original project for a simple training film warning of the terrible danger of Nazi espionage grew into a full-blown Ealing Studios feature, largely because the director (the great and nowadays relatively unsung Thorold Dickinson) was able to convince the 'top brass' that the message of his film should also be brought to the attention of the 'next of kin' on the home front.

The paradoxical result was that a film at first only intended for strictly limited circulation amongst those with security clearance became a great box office hit. Equally paradoxical was the degree of really quite startling realism - especially for the time - with which it convincingly presented certain uncomfortable realities of war to the domestic audience; the only concession to any kind of comforting assurance being the explosive finale when, despite horrifying casualties amongst the invasion force whose plans have been compromised by enemy agents, the commandos are able to press on and successfully sabotage their strategic military objective on the coast of occupied France.

The location filming of authentic training manoeuvres in and around the Cornish village of Megavissey is superb, and does not pull its punches in showing bodies blown to bits, etc. The remarkable live sound recording gives a really stomach-tightening sense of the military hardware being unleashed: The sounds of the actual artillery, bombs, and powerful engines actually mobilized for War contribute to a far greater urgency than what audiences were used to. Even now, it is abundantly clear that CGI pyrotechnics, by comparison, just do not pack the requisite punch.

The script cleverly and effectively alerts its audience to the very real danger of 'careless talk' and even deals unblinkingly with such unsavoury real-life scenarios as a cocaine-addicted stripper being blackmailed into spying on her soldier boyfriend by her Nazi-sympathising dresser; or a cultivated bookshop owner who is in reality a ruthless Nazi agent, and perfectly prepared to blackmail his young assistant into obtaining information by threatening to arrange that her Jewish parents, whom she has had to leave behind in occupied Amsterdam when she became a refugee, are detained in 'protective custody;' or the mild little businessman from Wales who strolls around undetected and undetained throughout the film, stealing information with alarming ease, to the untold advantage of his country's deadly foe.

These Nazi spies are not the usual easily-defeated Prussian blockheads beloved of more naive propaganda films, but intelligent, sophisticated and well-trained agents, supplied with detailed cover, a network of contacts, and portable radios. They represent an all-too-believable and imminent threat to Britain's survival.

One cannot help reflecting that this clear-eyed view of Britain's predicament stands now in stark contrast to the present era of lies and dissimulation. Churchill thought - quite reasonably during such an extreme emergency - of banning this film, but eventually reconsidered, since the military authorities of the time were ultimately prepared to trust the people of Britain with something surprisingly close to the truth. I venture to state that, evidently, people were trusted more by their governors during the global crisis of a World War, when national survival unquestionably stood in far greater danger of sudden catastrophe, than they are today!

Considering I was hitherto unaware of this excellent film prior to it's being shown on "Talking Pictures" tv, what a revelation it was. With a stellar cast and a "careless talk costs lives" propaganda backcloth, this film ticks along nicely and, whilst providing a very serious message also manages to give the viewer a genuine thriller. Some fine performances here and good to see the likes of Jack Hawkins, Nova Pilbeam, Mervyn Johns, Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, to mention but a few, getting involved. Overall, a really terrific effort and yet another old British war story that leaves so many more recent movies standing.

I awarded this film 7/10 as it was well produced with the help of the armed services and although actors played the principal parts it was entirely credible.It showed that despite being a propaganda film, the Germans were very efficient and capable in gathering war time data from the British using artifice, threats, intelligence and perverted bravery. There was of course plenty of posters reminding citizens and the armed forces the danger of a casual word about what one was doing, going, and releasing other information liable to be of use to the enemy.Mervyn Johns is cast again as the 5th columnist spy like he played in "Counterblast" and appears in the end scene with Charters & Caldicot that well known acting duo.Jack Hawkins makes an early appearance wearing a moustache using his unique pre-cancerous voice.Nova Pilbeam plays a Dutch émigré whose parents are held in "protective custody" by the Gestapo in Holland who is forced to provide intelligence of troop movements to her book seller German employer.

If it had not been on YouTube.com I would never have seen this excellent film as it never appears on UK television despite the existence of various heritage channels.In fact "London Live" for example keeps repeating Ealing films they have already transmitted when there are plenty of other vintage films like the present one they could show for us vintage film aficionados.

As ruthless as it is engrossing, this film deliberately lets us know early on who the spies are so we know precisely when the moments of peril subsequently arise.

There is as usual the dry humour one associates with even the most single-minded British wartime propaganda (some of the peripheral detail is even quite racy, and the wartime censor permitted a reference to cocaine addiction)!

Among a large cast of familiar faces the use of Mary Clare is particularly striking, while Phyllis Stanley is a fox as the film's Mata Hari. But the final scene with two old favourites manages to surpass all that has gone before.

Essential viewing: I would love to know what Goebbels made of it!