It's pretty good, and it ought to be. Powell and Pressburger produced, wrote and directed it. It was shot by Ronald Neame and edited by David Lean. And the cast includes some well-known faces -- Pamela Brown, Godfrey Tearle, Bernard Miles -- as well as some, uncredited, who were to become familiar over the next few years -- James Donald, Gordon Jackson, Peter Ustinov.
The script is literate, though it includes some incidents that are now staples, and the flight of the Wellington into Germany and its being damaged on the return over Holland are eminently realistic and filled with tension, given the period.
It strikes a viewer as especially well thought out. The behavior and conversation of the men huddled in the bomber are believable. None of the boyish exuberance of, say, Howard Hawks' "Air Force." Nobody shouts, "That'll teach the Nazi miscreants" or anything like that. It's all business, made a little less heavy by some light humor.
When the half dozen men land in Holland and are discovered by the locals, they aren't kissed by the girls, they don't have roses thrown at them, and nobody gives them bottles of wine. The Dutch have been living with the Nazi occupation for years and they know better than that. Pamela Brown, as a leader of the interrogation team, takes her time in making sure that she's not dealing with German ringers before she organizes help.
Some of the incidents may be real but are a little hard to believe. The men are to be taken, disguised as farmers, to the Catholic church for safety's sake and two of them balk because they are Methodist and Baptist. Huh? Seriously. It's somewhat surprising to find a Catholic church in a Duth village to begin with, and even more queer to find the congregation singing hymns. But, okay.
That's nothing compared to the film's many virtues, which include an exciting rescue at sea from a wobbling buoy.
See it. Audrey Hepburn was a teenager who saw it up close because she lived through it. Anything Audrey Hepburn (nee van Heemstra) did as a teen-aged girl is all right with me.
The script is literate, though it includes some incidents that are now staples, and the flight of the Wellington into Germany and its being damaged on the return over Holland are eminently realistic and filled with tension, given the period.
It strikes a viewer as especially well thought out. The behavior and conversation of the men huddled in the bomber are believable. None of the boyish exuberance of, say, Howard Hawks' "Air Force." Nobody shouts, "That'll teach the Nazi miscreants" or anything like that. It's all business, made a little less heavy by some light humor.
When the half dozen men land in Holland and are discovered by the locals, they aren't kissed by the girls, they don't have roses thrown at them, and nobody gives them bottles of wine. The Dutch have been living with the Nazi occupation for years and they know better than that. Pamela Brown, as a leader of the interrogation team, takes her time in making sure that she's not dealing with German ringers before she organizes help.
Some of the incidents may be real but are a little hard to believe. The men are to be taken, disguised as farmers, to the Catholic church for safety's sake and two of them balk because they are Methodist and Baptist. Huh? Seriously. It's somewhat surprising to find a Catholic church in a Duth village to begin with, and even more queer to find the congregation singing hymns. But, okay.
That's nothing compared to the film's many virtues, which include an exciting rescue at sea from a wobbling buoy.
See it. Audrey Hepburn was a teenager who saw it up close because she lived through it. Anything Audrey Hepburn (nee van Heemstra) did as a teen-aged girl is all right with me.