A peaceful, tiny, isolated English village is taken over by a few truck loads of Nazi paratroopers posing as British soldiers. Their plan: To disable a nearby tracking station in time for the imminent German invasion of the island. The villagers twig and the Nazis reveal themselves and herd the citizens into some of the houses with the help of the village squire, who is a fifth columnist. A few of the more defiant residents are shot or bayoneted. Attempts to inform the outside world fail repeatedly until a young boy finally escapes. Genuine British troops arrive. There is a shoot out. The Germans are killed.
This was, I suspect, the source for a recent resurrection, "The Day the Eagle Landed" or something like that, which was commercially minded enough to bring the Yanks to the rescue. The goal of the Germans in the remake was the assassination of Churchill.
It's based on a Graham Greene story and the film was released by Ealing in 1942, designed to be a morale booster. When Greene wrote the story, the threat of an invasion was real enough. The lesson that informs the plot is that class distinctions don't matter (the squire is a spy; the wealthy old lady gives her life, and so does the humble cook). Greene's reputation is that of a master of ambiguity and irony, of subtle inquiries into Big Question, but what we have here is an expression of a pulp sensibility.
The production gets the message across alright but in a way that today seems a bit crude. All -- and I mean ALL -- of the German soldiers are sausage-eating pigs, authoritarian sadists, and just plain rude. There is no hint of humanity, melancholy, or any other recognizable human emotion -- unless ruthless determination can somehow be defined as an emotion.
I mean, when they order a woman to go into another room, they SHOVE her from behind, even though she is already obeying the order. They sneer when they speak. They sneer even when they AREN'T speaking.
The distinction between good and evil is effectively drawn but crude too, as in a comic book. Not that there isn't some deliberate humor, but it's equally subfusc. Mother to young son: "It's all for the sake of morale. Do you know what morale is?" Son: "Yes, it's what the Wops ain't got."
The performances are professional enough and the director, without any razzle dazzle, gets the job done. It's just that it all seems to awfully retrograde from our current perspective. It has the rudimentary quality of a wartime wall poster -- "Loose Lips Sink Ships", "Keep 'em Flying", "Uncle Sam Wants You." Maybe such techniques worked then. Maybe they still work. They seem to be coming back into use, although they now take the form of bumper stickers.
This was, I suspect, the source for a recent resurrection, "The Day the Eagle Landed" or something like that, which was commercially minded enough to bring the Yanks to the rescue. The goal of the Germans in the remake was the assassination of Churchill.
It's based on a Graham Greene story and the film was released by Ealing in 1942, designed to be a morale booster. When Greene wrote the story, the threat of an invasion was real enough. The lesson that informs the plot is that class distinctions don't matter (the squire is a spy; the wealthy old lady gives her life, and so does the humble cook). Greene's reputation is that of a master of ambiguity and irony, of subtle inquiries into Big Question, but what we have here is an expression of a pulp sensibility.
The production gets the message across alright but in a way that today seems a bit crude. All -- and I mean ALL -- of the German soldiers are sausage-eating pigs, authoritarian sadists, and just plain rude. There is no hint of humanity, melancholy, or any other recognizable human emotion -- unless ruthless determination can somehow be defined as an emotion.
I mean, when they order a woman to go into another room, they SHOVE her from behind, even though she is already obeying the order. They sneer when they speak. They sneer even when they AREN'T speaking.
The distinction between good and evil is effectively drawn but crude too, as in a comic book. Not that there isn't some deliberate humor, but it's equally subfusc. Mother to young son: "It's all for the sake of morale. Do you know what morale is?" Son: "Yes, it's what the Wops ain't got."
The performances are professional enough and the director, without any razzle dazzle, gets the job done. It's just that it all seems to awfully retrograde from our current perspective. It has the rudimentary quality of a wartime wall poster -- "Loose Lips Sink Ships", "Keep 'em Flying", "Uncle Sam Wants You." Maybe such techniques worked then. Maybe they still work. They seem to be coming back into use, although they now take the form of bumper stickers.