Unpublished Story

The lasting value of this film is the almost documentary scenes from the blitz in the shelters with a lot of insights into ordinary people and, above all, a newspaper being bombed and getting on with the work anyway. This is 1942 in the worst heat of the war but after the blitz, the film starts with the Dunkirk trauma with Richard Greene getting away from France with one of the last boats and then continuing his reporting business under the blitz of London, where he runs into lovely Valerie Hobson and a spy circle, masked as a movement for "Peace in Our Time", one of the most ironic headlines in history. But in the heart of the intrigue is a small man Trapes (Frederick Cooper in a very memorable performance), who actually believes in peace and preaches it with all the good faith of Neville Chamberlain, and his case is the most interesting human part of the film. He is bombed out, like so many others, and his whole world is shattered, which makes him wake up to a new reality, and he takes the consequences, even if they turn to be fatal. Richard Greene becomes secondary in all this, while it's London under the blitz which is the main actor of this almost documentary of the darkest hour of Britain in London.

British war correspondent Bob Randall (Greene) personally witnesses the Allied defeat in France in May of 1940. After a harrowing experience, he is fortunate to be evacuated to England. He immediately resumes his position as a reporter

for a major London newspaper.

While reporting daily news events, he discovers a society of pacifists, the

People for Peace. Bob is incensed by this group, believing their activities are defeatist and are only advancing the Nazi cause. Unknown to the public, this group has been infiltrated by German agents who manipulate the society to sow despair among the British people.

As the Germans bomb British cities, Bob makes it his personal mission to report on the activities of this group. He finds opposition among reporters who want free speech and British censors who, for security reasons, don't want the story published. Bob is eventually joined by another reporter, Carol Bennett

(Hobson), who helps expose the enemy in their midst.

This well made wartime film includes elements of quiet and very effective

humor. This offsets the grim nature of war against the civilian population of London. Recommended.

This is a superior early wartime 'message picture' containing a great deal of real footage of the London Blitz, not all of which I recognised. Richard Greene and Valerie Hobson play two journalists working for the newspaper, the London Gazette, and much of the film takes place in the newsroom. The film's plot largely concerns a British 'peace society' which has been heavily infiltrated by Nazi agents. Anyone who doubts that that is how things worked with the Nazis has only to read the two books INSIDE THE GESTAPO and INSIDE INFORMATION by the high-ranking Gestapo defector (who reported directly to Heydrich) Hansjuergen Koehler to get the true picture. That is precisely how the Gestapo used the 'peace societies', as fronts for espionage and subversion. The Soviet Union did the same thing. It is such a standard and obvious technique that it is a wonder that anyone is left who does not see it clearly, but there are always fools aplenty. This film's message is thus very direct, but also very correct. It is warning the British public not only about appeasers, which abounded in Britain (Neville Chamberlain being the most prominent!), but about the woolly-headed idealists pursuing 'peace', which simply cannot be done with people like the Nazis. (See Dame Flora Robson's amazing performance in GUNS AT BATASI, 1964, for perhaps the best portrayal of a 'peace junkie' out of her depth.) There are numerous old faithfuls in the supporting cast, Basil Radford as a good buy, Roland Culver as a bad guy, Andre Morrell as a Gestapo agent, Frederick Cooper as a 'peace junkie' who discovers he has been manipulated by the Nazis and who then is to be seen pouring more sweat from terror than if he had been under twenty arc lights, and plenty of other excellent character actors. The film is well directed by Harold French, one of the directors of the three excellent Somerset Maugham anthologies (QUARTET, TRIO, and ENCORE), and who lived to be 100 years old (1897-1997)! Strange to think the last feature film he directed was in 1955 (THE MAN WHO LOVED REDHEADS with Moira Shearer) and that he then lived another 42 years. I wonder what he was doing. The film is based on a story by its producer, Anthony Havelock-Allan, famous for producing David Lean's BRIEF ENCOUNTER (for which he was uncredited), Lean's GREAT EXPECTATIONS, Lean's RYAN'S DAUGHTER, Franco Zeffirelli's ROMEO AND JULIET, and many more. He died in 2003, just before turning 99. So between them, the producer and the director of this film lived for just under 200 years. What were they taking? Maybe if we all watch this film 100 times we will all live forever.

An English journalist just back from Dunkirk writes a story blasting a London-based peace- in-our-time organization, but the story is killed by a government agency. Are there Nazi sympathizers or just cautious bureaucrats in the agency? Is the peace group led by innocent dupes or by ruthless Nazi agents? The reporter intends to find out.

The movie isn't A-list, but it's better than a programmer. It's a craftsman-like piece of work. In feature roles are two first-rate British character actors, Roland Culver (The Pallisers, Dead of Night, On Approval) and Miles Malleson (Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Man in the White Suit).

Well produced and - in the supporting roles at least - well acted, though the two leads, Greene and Hobson, give off the odd splinter or two. (Basil Radford weighs in with a very watchable turn as the undercover Intelligence Officer).

The story is a variation on the 5th column scare, which had well-worn currency in wartime England of course, but manages to steer clear of the most obvious clichés.

Interesting and fairly authentic view of London in wartime.