Midnight Oil:Movies and More

"Operation Crossbow (1965)" -INDb combines a good spy story and WWII military history with a pinch of the human interest angle thrown in for good measure. George Peppard is the British spy masquerading as a Dutch engineer in the pay of the Germans to help create the dreaded V2 rocket bombs (no explanation of his American accent). Sophia Loren makes a cameo appearance as the Italian wife of the Dutch engineer trying to escape the Nazi occupation with her (trilingual ?) children. It's all very confusing. You have to keep an eye on those German subtitles. Sophia is evidently there to prop up the galmour factor. If you like rockets a lot, wartime intrigue or Sophia Loren, this film may have some points of interest for you.

This movie was recently screened with two other wartime movies on TVO. See reviews for “The Man Who Never Was” 1956 and “Went the Day Well?” 1942 in the Midnight Oil video trailer section.

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See director, Michael Anderson interviewed in the video trailer of "Operation Crossbow" from TVO.

Catch the opening scenes video trailer of “Operation Crossbow” 1965

“The Who Never Was” (1956) IMDb with Clifton Webb spins an intriguing yarn about British military intelligence during WWII. Apparently based on actual events, Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu (Clifton Webb) finds himself with the challenging and somewhat gruesome task of diverting the attention of the German High Command away from a planned invasion of the continent through planting misinformation on a dead body. Montagu and his team are indefatigable in their efforts to serve the national interest. In contrast, the cost of the war in terms of personal loss is depicted through the part of the grieving father of the dead man and the distraught girlfriend (Gloria Greene) who is told that her beloved is dead. Though perhaps not the greatest spy thriller every made, I find this film to be interesting enough to be watchable. The fictionalized account of actual spy stuff certainly makes this movie of historical interest for WWII film buffs.

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See the TVO SNAM preview for “The Man Who Never Was” (1956)

Catch the video trailer for the opening credits of “The Man Who Never Was” 1956. I believe that the dramatic reading in the opening is from a poem by H.G. Wells.

“Shenandoah” (1965) IMDb with James Stewart playing the lead role provides a less than usual perspective on the American Civil War. The film tells the story of a well ensconced Virginian farming family caught up in the latter part of the Civil War. Stewart, as Charlie Anderson, vehiculates a pragmatic pacificism about a mean and dirty war that now encroaches on his land and his family. Anderson himself is not undergirded by a particularly robust morality about the war nor about his position on pacificism. He finds himself fighting a losing battle even though he technically remains “out of the war”.

The Uncivil War episode offered by Saturday Night at the Movies pairs “Ride with the Devil” (1995) IMDb with this movie classic from 1965. SNAM’s interviewed guests bring out the relationship of “Shenandoah” with American sentiments of the day concerning young American men snatched up into the war in Vietnam and the accompanying anger, confusion and sense of helplessness on the part of those at home.

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See the SNAM preview for The Uncivil War here. Dig in to the background for the films through the Interviews on The Uncivil War with experts on the period.

Catch the video trailer for “Shenandoah” (1965) here.

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"Went the Day Well?" (1942) , from a short story by Graham Greene, is a wartime propaganda film with some surprises up its sleeve. The film, set in a sleepy English village, depicts the responses of ordinary folk to the extraordinary situation of having some German paratroopers land in their backyard posing as a British engineering detail. Watch out for dithering sweet little old ladies who serve tea and crumpets while secretly wielding an axe against unsuspecting German servicemen!

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Catch the video trailer of "Went the Day Well?"