Quite possibly the best film ever made.
Certainly the one that shows Pressburger as the best screenwriter.
The tight plotting and constant textual and visual references backwards and forwards make it a marvel to watch, and one of the few films I know that bears watching twice in quick succession.
Some of the comments from US reviewers imply that a version has been shown there that is heavily cut and re-ordered. No wonder its confusing for them. You must miss quite a lot of the point if you don't see the first 3 or 4 scenes of the 1941 training exercise - and you'd better remember them because when the flashback catches up with the frame story we see that things weren't quite the way they seemed the first time.
Powell and Pressburger (and the designers and artists and technicians) really do manage to work together here. One of the reasons that the film is so good is that it is a work-out for more than one of your senses - to get the most out of it you have to keep your eyes and your ears open, you nave to keep track of the visuals and the text and the music. That's how a film is supposed to work, but so often doesn't.
As always with Pressburger, morality, ethics, and politics are on stage. He never wrote a war film in which Germans are cartoon bad guys, or the Allies painted angels. It's an anti-Nazi film, and its an intelligent and sensitive anti-Nazi film. As in Casablanca, part of this effect is achieved because the film was made by people who had lived through it. Walbrook and Powell were both in England to escape the Nazis. Livesey had volunteered for the war - and been turned down because he was too old. Kerr's father had been gassed in the trenches.
Here we see Clive standing up for the rules of war and honourable behaviour in three wars - yet we know that there are others on his side - the South African officer in the trenches, Spud, perhaps the Americans, the British commanders in South Africa - who are themselves willing to curt corners, to break the rules, to shoot or torture prisoners. In part this is a film about war crimes, and the ethics of war. It explicitly asks whether or not we have do evil to fight evil? Which is one of the reasons it is so relevant today.
All this, and its hilariously funny too! A description of the film makes it sound terribly serious, but it is in large part a comedy, and the Berlin scenes are some of the funniest ever filmed.
And the three male leads all get to marry their own private Deborah Kerr! That can't be bad. Though it does make you wonder about Powell...
Certainly the one that shows Pressburger as the best screenwriter.
The tight plotting and constant textual and visual references backwards and forwards make it a marvel to watch, and one of the few films I know that bears watching twice in quick succession.
Some of the comments from US reviewers imply that a version has been shown there that is heavily cut and re-ordered. No wonder its confusing for them. You must miss quite a lot of the point if you don't see the first 3 or 4 scenes of the 1941 training exercise - and you'd better remember them because when the flashback catches up with the frame story we see that things weren't quite the way they seemed the first time.
Powell and Pressburger (and the designers and artists and technicians) really do manage to work together here. One of the reasons that the film is so good is that it is a work-out for more than one of your senses - to get the most out of it you have to keep your eyes and your ears open, you nave to keep track of the visuals and the text and the music. That's how a film is supposed to work, but so often doesn't.
As always with Pressburger, morality, ethics, and politics are on stage. He never wrote a war film in which Germans are cartoon bad guys, or the Allies painted angels. It's an anti-Nazi film, and its an intelligent and sensitive anti-Nazi film. As in Casablanca, part of this effect is achieved because the film was made by people who had lived through it. Walbrook and Powell were both in England to escape the Nazis. Livesey had volunteered for the war - and been turned down because he was too old. Kerr's father had been gassed in the trenches.
Here we see Clive standing up for the rules of war and honourable behaviour in three wars - yet we know that there are others on his side - the South African officer in the trenches, Spud, perhaps the Americans, the British commanders in South Africa - who are themselves willing to curt corners, to break the rules, to shoot or torture prisoners. In part this is a film about war crimes, and the ethics of war. It explicitly asks whether or not we have do evil to fight evil? Which is one of the reasons it is so relevant today.
All this, and its hilariously funny too! A description of the film makes it sound terribly serious, but it is in large part a comedy, and the Berlin scenes are some of the funniest ever filmed.
And the three male leads all get to marry their own private Deborah Kerr! That can't be bad. Though it does make you wonder about Powell...