4/10
Plain stupid
2 April 2012
"The Secret War of Harry Frigg" shows the crisis in which the movie industry in the sixties has been. Stars like Paul Newman were not able to find decent material for films and had to do stuff like this. At that time WWII which had received serious treatment in the fifties was now ripe for spoofs, mostly in connection with the Italian front line because Italian soldiers did not remind people e.g. of concentration camps. Good comedies about wartime are rare ("To be or not to be") and the more distant the war got the more stupid the comedies about war. Watching Newman in the role of Harry Frigg makes me cringe. His character is completely unrealistic and so is the rest of the story. WWII became a playground for selfish soldiers who seemed to have no other problem but to have fun is definitely no fun to me.In this film as in "What did you do in the war, daddy?" the Italians are kind of cute and the Germans are the real enemies. One wonders when the first comedy about 9/11 will come out...
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