Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Bluebell Alcock Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Robert J. Maxwell Patricia Roc is on leave from a French convent. She's wearing her nun's habit when the French authorities pick her up and accuse her of being a German spy. She LOOKS like a nun. She has a clean, honest, pretty face that's not overly expressive. I guess I should say she looks the way a nun SHOULD look. My nuns didn't resemble her at all. Mine impressed me as huge bat-like creatures waiting to swoop down on you with a ruler.Anyway, she's a novice, not yet having taken her vows. What this almost always means is that there's a man in her future -- and so there is.The Germans occupy the town and Roc is given crummy clothes and transferred to a guarded compound that used to be a luxury hotel, somewhere near Rouen. There are a thousand or more other British women held prisoner there. They are the usual varied group. There is Flora Robson with her long face and squinched eyes exuding authority. There is the cynical babe crepitating with wisecracks. There is the stripper (ie., whore) who is selling her body to the German sergeant in return for a single room instead of a double. There are one or two hefty Nazi moles in the group too.Their life in the internment camp didn't strike me as particularly demanding. Nobody complains about the food. It's an attractive resort hotel, after all, with spacious grounds including a summer house. Their most ardent complaint is that they have to schlepp hot water up four flights of stairs to take a bath and then two at a time must share the tub before the water cools. Except for the barbed-wired inner and outer walls, conditions are better than those under which I grew up.But the capacious rooms and the absence of genuine hardships is necessary to maintain the tone of the story, which is Gemutlich and even gay. The girls stage shows in the ballroom, with costumes and a band, to entertain one another as well as the German staff.Then -- cherchez l'homme. A British bomber is disabled over the compound and three men parachute inside its walls. They must be hidden from the soldiers and the spies. And then, after a romantic interlude between Patricia Roc -- whose character has the same name as an attractive girl I once took to Roseland in New York -- the three airmen must be helped to escape. As the aviators speed away in their stolen staff car, the ladies all gather on the stage and sing, "There'll Always Be An England." The story isn't uninteresting and there are a couple of witty lines in the dialog. At the beginning, Roc is hustled onto a German truck filled with other captured internees. The woman next to Roc introduces herself and begins gabbing away. A third girl is sitting there and, not having been introduced, asks, "Don't I exist?" The other snaps, "Yes, unfortunately." For all the dashing around, giggling, and chat, it's never slow or boring and there are some moments of genuine drama. A diverting war-time piece.

MartinHafer While I could see a few plot problems here and there, this British propaganda film did a good job of rallying the folks at home for the war effort. It begins in France just after the fall of the country (summer 1942). While you rarely hear about them, naturally some British citizens got stranded in the country and could not make it back to the UK. This film concerns British women who were interred by the Germans in a rather nice and luxurious hotel. While I have no idea how the Germans actually treated such women, I doubt if they were as nice and lax as they were in the film. This is a rare case where the Nazis portrayed in the propaganda film seemed nicer than the real thing--usually it's the other way around! The film initially is about these women adjusting to their new home and it took a strange turn when three British airmen were shot down and actually sought refuge with the women! The idea of them being able to just sneak in to this guarded facility seemed hard to believe. However, because the acting was very good as well as the direction and script, it seemed to work well. Despite a good job, there were a few sour notes. One was that when the prisoners or escaped fliers fought with Nazis, the bad guys had a very convenient habit of NOT crying out for help when they were attacked!! The other was late in the film when one woman went from loving one of the fliers to turning him in to the Nazis with incredible speed--it made no sense and seemed quite contrived. Still, the film generally underplayed the drama and was otherwise pretty convincing.For a somewhat similar plot but better handled is Claudette Colbert's "Three Came Home"--which is based on a real American woman's experience in a Japanese internment camp.

Alex da Silva The setting is a women's internment camp which resembles a very large, posh country house with several halls, plenty of space and some luxury rooms. Three RAF pilots find their way into the camp and the women must hide them before these 3 heroic chaps can make their escape. Will things work out as planned....? There are definitely not 2,000 women in this place. There are, however, a group of irritating women who deserve to be incarcerated. Phyllis Calvert as "Freda" speaks in a ghastly posh accent for the whole film and is quite annoying. Jean Kent as "Bridie" is the funniest to watch while Renee Houston as "Maude" is far better as a cabaret singer/performer than as a wise-cracking street-girl. Betty Jardine does well as section supervisor "Teresa" but there are no great performances in this story. Patricia Roc as "Rosemary" comes off as the best character but she shouldn't be in the film in the first place. She is caught by the French signalling to German airplanes to blow up an ammunition hold. She's in the wrong goddam prison! An attempt is made at sentimentalism by having somebody sing "There's no place like home" whilst we pan across several of the women's faces. It's rubbish. Another moment that doesn't work happens when Muriel (Flora Robson) and Clairen (Muriel Aked) are taken away to a German prison camp. I'm afraid that we just don't care! There is no drama. The men have absolutely no presence and come across as slightly wimpish.The ending is laughably bad. I'm not referring to the plot but to the rendition of "There'll always be an England". However, the film is lightweight fluff that passes the time and it's OK as that.

Neil-117 All those women are confined in a remarkably luxurious German internment camp without male company. What a waste, as so many of them seem to have film star looks and wardrobes to match. So what better spot for some British airforce chaps to seek refuge? Seriously now folks, those British boys must be helped to escape at once. But it's awfully hot in here don't you think, perhaps I'll just take a bath...After a slow and rather class-conscious opening, the story develops into a stylish, sometimes funny and often sexy battle of wits against the usual hapless German guards and the occasional informer. Along the way, the camera lingers wistfully on every stockinged thigh and lacy bosom, but somehow everyone manages to keep thinking of England – at least some of the time.A top cast of female leads.