The Next of Kin

This is a really good war film with none of the old boys club class divisions of so many other films. Action is very believable with the men being shot collapsing very realistically and the British soldier using his rifle back on the neck of a Nazi is as realistic as can be. Only annoyance was the British soldiers failure to look before running round corners or bunching up instead of spacing apart. It's not generally known but in late 30s huge numbers of German 'tourists' travelled UK photographing all military and industrial sites. It's well worth watching.

According to IMDB, Winston Churchill wanted to have this film banned. After seeing it, I can understand...though I am glad the movie was shown to British audiences during the war. This is because it's a different sort of war film...one without the usual cliches and with a much higher degree of realism. So realistic in part of the story that the British get their butts kicked by the Germans and a few of the Brits in the story don't act so intelligently or honorably.

The theme in the movie is essentially for military folks to keep their mouths shut and their wits about them, as Nazi agents might be about their country in order to report all that they see to their bosses back in Germany. Again and again through the course of the picture, you see some Brits working hard to stop the German spy apparatus but far more who unwittingly help the enemy through their own stupidity.

I really appreciated how the film passed on an essential message without making the Nazis like the usual snarling villains in war films. I also appreciate how intelligent the script is. In fact, the only things I didn't love about the film was some of its use of stock footage near the end....which is a real shame since they did a great job of creating realistic looking battle scenes. Well worth seeing.

By the way, you can sure tell this was NOT made in Hollywood, as you get a brief glimpse of boobs as well as having a curse word. This is not to say British films of the era had an anything goes style...British censorship was very strong...just not regarding a curse word or showing a book with a bare chested lady on the cover.

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!

Why does the Brigadier's wine merchant know where he is being posted next? The mess sergeant let it drop. Efforts to tighten up security to make sure leaks that might reveal troop movement aren't much use when the British soldier believes we're all in it together. The only suspicion is raised when a trooper claims he was assigned to Headquarters, and another soldier doesn't recognize him. He reports him to the C.O., and it turns out he's right.... and the reporting trooper has his leave cut short to escort the spy to prison. Even that pretty dancer you've been dating turns out to be telling German spies what you've said innocuously.

It's all being managed by people who run bookstores or are dentists, with accents that proclaim they are as English as John Bull. And their deadliest agent, who kills Nova Pilbeam -- Boo! Hiss! -- is worn-down, workaday Mervyn Johns.

The War Office commissioned this movie from Michael Balcon. He took the small amount of money, doubled it, made this rip-roaring yet somber spy drama. Once he recovered the money he had put into it, the profits went to the War Office, and there were plenty of profits. It was enormously popular, and rightly so, even if Churchill considered having it censored because it might destroy morale. If we can't trust each other, whom can we trust?

It all ends with an exciting race. The army is planning a massive raid. Johns has the aerial surveys. Can he get it to the German High Command in time for them to figure out where it will be and stop it? Or at least make it so difficult that death notices must be sent to the next of kin?

So keep your lip buttoned up. Even if you're Wayne Naunton taking to Basil Radford. Mervyn Johns might be listening.

I loved this film. It is so genuine, all the persons playing part in it are so very much alive and convincing, that you get under the skin of them all, whether they end up badly or not, even the spies and the crooks. This is not the only war film Winston Churchill wanted to ban, there were a number and several of the best, and this is one of them. Fortunately he didn't succeed in banning any of them.

Especially so long afterwards, 76 years later to be exact, it's immensely rewarding to see such an example of supreme realism all the way, of ordinary people, officers and soldiers, spies and victims, in their very various precarious situations, all under severe pressure, some under threats of death or worse, but all keeping on working and straining themselves for what everyone of them believes is for the best of all. The Germans are not depicted as crooks and villains, they are rather very well objectively filmed, like also the Britishers. They are all doing an extremely difficult job under extreme strain, and this was during the year when the war reached its deepest crisis. It is almost perfectly documentary in character all the way.