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Welles remembers the preamble in Mr. Arkadin, the phantom airplane also figures of course in A Matter of Life and Death, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger always saw the magical side of such machines. ("Off you go," Powell whispers to the bomber in his cameo at the RAF tower.) "B for Bertie" over the North Sea, just the hum of the motor and the chatter of the crew and suddenly the explosion from below that takes out one of its engines. Out of the cockpit and up a tree for the British airmen in Nazi-occupied Holland, kids materialize amid tall grass as if from a Jan Zoetelief Tromp canvas. A stout and jovial bunch, the garage owner (Bernard Miles) is front gunner while the aristocrat (Godfrey Tearle) handles the rear, the navigator (Hugh Williams) is a thespian ready to don drag and clogs. "I did it in a picture once. It was a spy story and we all got shot." A reversal and a companion piece to 49th Parallel, a taut and jocular tour by bicycle and cattle truck and rowboat. Hitchcock figures in the church sequence, a bit of organ music and Latin (skinny Peter Ustinov orates from the pulpit) to distract the Kommandant from the parachutes hidden under a parishioner's skirt. (Suspense is deployed humorously throughout, Emrys Jones as the lost pilot turns up happily on the soccer field while a soupçon of intrigue floats around the German word for "corkscrew.") Robert Helpmann contributes a twitchy pirouette as the quisling with the gramophone, the Resistance is female: The fierce schoolteacher (Pamela Brown) conducts a thorough interrogation, the widow (Googie Withers) is glad to wear a flowing gown during a blackout. "These Dutch girls are wizard!" Verhoeven returns the salute in Soldier of Orange. With Eric Portman, Hugh Burden, Joyce Redman, and Hay Petrie. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |