Nonureva Really Surprised!

SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Jakoba True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

JohnHowardReid Copyright 30 December 1960 by 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. New York opening at the Victoria: 17 February 1961. U.S. release: 8 February 1961. U.K. release: 29 January 1961. Australian release: 23 February 1961. 8,971 feet. 99 minutes.COMMENT: For once, there was a pretty fair consensus among the critics as to the faults of this picture:"A first-class idea for a spy story is unnecessarily spoiled in this otherwise more-than-competent programmer... Screenwriter Balchin should have known better than to put a 'frame' around the story and tell the heart of it in flashback. The easily foreseen result of such ineptitude is that the spectator's pleasure is spoiled by knowing how it all ends", wrote Flavia Wharton in Films In Review.The reviewer for Variety also found "A weakness of the film is that it is revealed at the beginning that the hero gets through his ordeal safely." Time's critic tended to agree: "An ingenious spy thriller that raises subtle and uncomfortable questions of political morality. If a citizen betrays his country, the crime is called treason and the penalty, in wartime, is death. But what if a country betrays one of its citizens?" As for myself, I concur with most of the above. Suzy Parker is certainly dull all the way through. And some of the other acting is suspect. One of the faults of British films is that most players make no attempt whatever at conveying foreign nationals. Bosley Crowther noted that "Robert Stephens plays a Nazi captain as if he were a product of an English public school," but Mr. Stephens is merely part of — rather than an exception to — the tradition.Many of our problems center with the surrounding frame story which is not only poorly written but slackly directed too. Terseness and imagination from both quarters increase dramatically once the flashback starts. Here Balchin's suspenseful, to-the-point writing obviously incorporates his first-hand knowledge of the organizing and modus operandi of spying.The budget appears quite lavish by British "A"-feature standards and CinemaScope is well utilized.

edwagreen Bradford Dillman in a dilly of a movie with the late Suzy Parker.The story concerns itself with British intelligence choosing someone they know will crack under Nazi torture and divulge secrets that will be false in nature pertaining to the D-Day invasion.Naturally, the female (Parker) falls for our hero.(Dillman) Of course, Dillman surprises all by surviving the brutal torture. The picture was torture by itself, watching the torturing sequences was even worse. The worst part was that the suicide pill wasn't supposed to work so Dillman had to endure more. Poor Dillman. Poor audience.This film at best is slow moving and tedious in many ways.

Deusvolt This movie is a downer so I understand why many people didn't like it. But nevertheless it is important because it pioneered the concept of the sympathetic anti-hero as the main character in movies.Spoilers ahead: Bradford Dillman's character is infiltrated into occupied France by the Allies (the devious British intelligence, actually). His mission: To prepare the French Resistance for the coming invasion which required him to eliminate a mole within the movement. The alleged enemy collaborator turns out to be a kindly and affable fellow who saves Dillman from eating cat disguised as rabbit in a restaurant. The old Frenchman explained that what he ordered was unlikely to be rabbit considering the rationing and severe shortage of food in occupied France. That scene is comic with the French guy saying "meow" after Dillman ordered rabbit. I believe the Darnell-Howard TV version, Deception, had the same scene.In any case, Dillman is captured by the Germans, no doubt through the machinations of British intelligence. As planned by his controllers, under torture he spills what he believed were the details of the planned invasion of France by the Allies through Calais. Of course, we now know that Eisenhower's staff chose Normandy for the invasion landing. The Germans scramble to protect Calais while the Allies invade Normandy. Dillman is rescued by a commando unit and taken back behind Allied lines where he is congratulated for his contribution in making the invasion a success.The hitch is that, he found out that he killed an innocent man. The old Frenchman was not a collaborator after all.If you like spy-war movies with double deceptions see also 36 Hours starring James Garner and Rod Taylor.

Aldanoli Bradford Dillman is an American tapped for a dangerous mission behind enemy lines in the campaign of deception leading up to D-Day--except that he's only been told half the story by his superiors. The story is based on real-life exploits documented in Anthony Cave Brown's book *Bodyguard of Lies,* (the title of which was based on Churchill's famous comment, "In wartime, truth is so precious that she must always be attended by a bodyguard of lies"). Dillman is completely convincing as the spy who is selected precisely because his psychological profile shows that he *will* eventually break under torture. The depiction of torture itself is pretty grueling, by the way, especially for 1961, and one scene in particular was parodied in the 1984 Abrahams-Zucker movie *Top Secret!* (with Val Kilmer in the Dillman part). Incidentally, Dillman and his co-star, Suzy Parker, who was the top model in America at the time, and embarking on a film and television career, fell in love while making this movie and married shortly thereafter; she gave up both her modeling and acting career for domestic life as Mrs. Dillman not long afterward.