Unpublished Story

Richard Greene is a newspaperman covering the retreat in Northern France. When he gets gets back to his paper, he dictates his story and collapses. When he arises to pursue the news, a peace-at-any-cost movement, the Blitz, and novice newspaperwoman Valerie Hobson occupy his attention.

It's a pretty good battle-of-the-sexes story set amidst the darkest days of the War, and besides the leads, there are some fine performers on hand: Basil Radford as a censor who may have a little more on the ball; George Carney as a public-house owner who insists that people enter through the bombed-out door instead of the bombed-out window; and other welcome movie regulars like Roland Culver and Miles Malleson. Director Harold French gets good performances out of everyone, and if the propaganda seems laid on too thick for modern tastes, it's what was in style at the moment.

Miss Hobson's star was in the ascendant. She was married to the film's producer, Anthony Havelock-Allan. It was the fourth of nine pictures they would work on together.

"Unpublished Story" is a very unique look into Britain during the war years. In many ways, it comes off a bit like a documentary--with events unfolding shortly after they happened for real. However, it is a drama--one based, in part, on real events and real Nazi-backed movements within Allied nations.

The film begins with a reporter, Bob Randall (Richard Greene) straggling in from the Dunkirk boat lift. He's dead tired but anxious to report what he saw--in particular, fifth columnists (i.e., Nazi agents posing as regular French citizens) who helped the Germans to topple France. However, to his surprise, he finds that folks in Britain STILL don't want to come to terms with this--and so-called 'peace' or 'appeasement' groups within the UK STILL are pushing for a peaceful settlement to the Nazis--even though the war was raging. But Bob is relentless and with the help of a new lady reporter (Valerie Hobson), they doggedly follow these groups and dig deeper. Not surprisingly, they find very bad people behind all of this.

This is a very fascinating view of the war--through the eyes of the Brits and discussing a lot of things you rarely see through normal documentary films--the fear, the Home Guard, hysteria and the Blitz. To help matters, the acting is amazingly good--very realistic and subdued. It also helped that the film avoided many of the clichés and overly jingoistic material that sometimes filled Hollywood's wartime dramas. My only real complaint, and it's a tiny one, is the lousy use of rear projection in the scene outside St. Paul's during the Blitz.

British actor Richard Greene was well on his way to rivaling Tyrone Power at 20th Century Fox when he returned to England when war broke out. Later he became my childhood Robin Hood in a successful TV series.

Here he stars with Valerie Hobson in "Unpublished Story" from 1942, directed by Harold French.

Greene plays reporter Bob Randall, who is exhausted as he returns from his assignment in Dunkirk. Among the young fighting men, he saw Nazis posing as French citizens as the Germans took over France.

What upsets him is that there are groups in England, such as Peace in our Time who refuse to accept the war news and believe there is a path to negotiation and peace. Hitler isn't such a bad guy.

Randall and a fellow reporter Carol (Hobson) investigate Peace in our Time further. She believes they have a right to free speech. He thinks they're dangerous and a threat to national security. In fact, he's having trouble getting his stories critiquing the pacifist movement published.

The film uses real newsreel footage of bombs dropping, and we see people walking in blackouts, running into the subway when they hear an alarm. It's everyday people coping with war happening on their own soil.

The acting is very good. Greene and Hobson have a nice chemistry. It's a propaganda film, but couched in an effective story.

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).

Unpublished Story is a propaganda piece with almost a documentary type setting in parts when it shows the effects of the Nazi bombings on Londoners.

Bob Randall (Richard Greene) and Carole Bennett (Valerie Hobson) are journalists investigating a pacifist group called People For Peace. The group is in effect taken over by Nazi fifth columnists to spread misinformation that resistance is futile.

Basil Radford plays Lamb, the man from the ministry with the habit to spike any news story not in the national interest.

It is an intriguing look at the peace movement at the time and the government at the time would had been aware that some unsavoury types would attempt to hijack such groups.

The film is rather uneven, you see brutal effects of the bombings but this is mixed with humour which sits rather inappropriately. The story of the secret Nazi infiltrators is not well told and at times appears confusing with little action regarding the main plot.