The Man Who Never Was

England    Clifton Webb

Re-enactment of a successful lie engineered by the British government which fooled the Germans in WW2. Done in 1955 the film reeked of the triumphalism the British government was trying to generate in a time of austerity, depression and gloom. The real England of the time surfaced with the angry-young-men meme several years later with the plays of Osborne et al.

Stiff upper lip, courage under fire, one for the team...all that rot seems like childish, stupid propaganda at this remove and no amount of slickness or cinemascope splendor can hide that anymore.

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