Cuore prigioniero

When I started watching this rarely seen film I didn't expect much. It received mild reviews in a television listings magazine and it was on during early weekday afternoon on C4. However, it turned out to be a remarkably touching film and a real tear jerker! It tells a story of a bunch of British soldiers at a prison camp in Germany and the best part is, that there is no token American! The story is told by mixing skillfully pre- war flashbacks, everyday camp life and home front events. Each part adds to the whole and keeps you glued to your seat until the end. The film crew shot this in 1946 at a real prison camp so the art direction is realist throughout.

Having read a lukewarm review of "The Captive Heart" in Time Out (my cinema bible) and thinking, "They're bound to trash this one," I leaped to the IMDb reviews ready to play my "champion of the turkey" role. What a pleasurable surprise to find it not needed, that I am indeed at one with sympathetic users and critics alike in admiration for this rather special offering from the Ealing archive. Whereas the comedies from the West London studios are still admired with affection, their more serious fare tends to be overlooked. "The Captive Heart" is something of a forgotten treasure, a tribute in the wake of victory, to our gallant servicemen who spent much of the second world war as prisoners in German camps. It's another team piece in the mode of Carol Reed's better known "The Way Ahead" which takes a cross section of class types and closely observes their behaviour as they share an enforced coming together. It's all very stereotypical but if treated with sincerity, as in both films, a measure of character cliché can be forgiven. If the level of acting is fairly mediocre, particularly some of the women with those period prissy upper class accents, one part, that of Michael Redgrave as a Czech who has assumed the role of an English soldier killed in battle to escape being identified by the Germans, stands out for its quality. Where the film really scores is in its reminder of a time when people were really nice to one another particularly when brought together in adversity. Everyone mucks in to help, from comforting the young soldier when first confronted with the permanence of his lack of sight to the initially unsympathetic character who gives up his chance of repatriation to aid one who needs it more, welcome reminders of an age when it was generally normal rather than exceptional to emerge from the cinema feeling good.

For me, this is one of the very best WW2 films ever made. Several reasons account for that judgment, including the fact that it was made so soon after the end of the War and it was partly shot in Germany. In this film there is none of the "at ease" rubbish seen later in Stalag 17, it is told as it really was with honesty and heroism both in the Camp and back in Blighty. The British cast and those behind the cameras do a superb job throughout and the story remains as absorbing today as it was when first told in 1946. Finally, I do have to confess that my late Father was a member of the accredited 51st Highland Division and does appear on-screen for a few seconds during an a German announcement to the prisoners, so it also keeps him alive to me and my family.

This is a deeply human and almost documentary account of the life of prisoners after Dunkirk who are not released until towards the end of the war, Michael Redgrave as the leading actor being far from alone among suffering fellow soldiers, as there is a number of tales told of dire destiny in this concentration camp of arduous fates. Redgrave is of course the most interesting case, a Czech escaped from the Germans and sought by Gestapo, hiding as an Englishman with a fake identity with suspiciously good knowledge of German, as his father was a diplomat in both London and Berlin. There is also Gordon Jackson with the loss of his sight and his despair about having to give up his betrothed, there is the family man whose wife is having a baby in his absence with that whole family story, there is the major (Basil Radford) struggling with the challenges of his responsibility, there are the sore trials used by the Germans make the camp existence more difficult than necessary for the prisoners, who nevertheless manage to break loose into comedy when an occasion arrives. It's heartrendingly human all the way, and the great love story developing in the ruins with inevitably critical consequences makes this film a definite and almost obligatory classic.

In Stalag 17 there's a famous scene and line where the audience who now knows that Peter Graves is an agent is pitching horseshoes and trying to obtain information, as he lands one, an off screen voice says 'that's a ringer.'

The British prisoners, mostly from Dunkirk, who because of capture sat out the war have a ringer among them in The Captive Heart. It's Michael Redgrave, but his is not an espionage mission. He's a Czech who's escaped from a concentration camp and found himself on the battlefield where the defenseless British have surrendered. He takes the identity and uniform of a dead officer and is then 'caught' by the Germans.

To keep up the deception Redgrave writes letters back to his 'wife' in the United Kingdom, played by his real life wife Rachel Kempson. She and her real husband have not gotten along and truth be told his call up for war was greeted with some relief. But Redgrave wrote such poetical stuff she falls for him by correspondence.

Although Redgrave's story is the main plot line, there are others that are nicely acted. Young Gordon Jackson goes blind because of lack of proper care for his wounds and he gives a touching performance. And chief officer of the prisoners, Basil Radford is an inspiring leader among them, trying to keep up morale as best he can.

The Captive Heart is a tandem pulling of the strings on the auricle and ventricle of the viewer. It's a fine wartime romantic drama with equal accent on the war and the romance. It was done just as Michael Redgrave was reaching his heights as one of the United Kingdom's premier players. Try not to miss it if it is broadcast.