Posted on 05/14/2022 8:55:21 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
With any war movie, the safe audience bet typically favors the immediate, graphic horrors of battle. That way, when you see a title such as “Hacksaw Ridge,” you know a director (in that case Mel Gibson) will be operating with a cinematic license to slaughter.
Espionage makes for subtler, trickier storytelling. “Operation Mincemeat,” now purring along, confidently, on Netflix, takes as its subject a singular feat of deception cooked up by British intelligence in 1943. How decisively the operation turned the Allied tide against Nazi Germany is up for historical debate. But the men and women of MI5 assuredly helped make the invasion of Sicily a key Allied military success.
Hitler’s forces were tricked by an eccentric group of plotters, including no less than three current or future spy novelists, among them Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming of future James Bond fame. Using the corpse of an itinerant Welshman, the Jewish barrister turned naval Intelligence officer Ewen Montagu led a team of British military strategists in creating the ruse.
The borrowed corpse? He played the role of a fictional British soldier with a fastidiously detailed back story. The body, in uniform, with letters from his fake sweetheart tucked in a pocket, was strategically plunked into the ocean off the coast of Spain, officially a neutral country at the time.
The corpse washed up on the coast of a fishing village, as planned. The dead soldier’s waterlogged briefcase contained papers indicating an imminent invasion of Greece and Sardinia, even though everyone on all sides of the war expected the Allies to hit Sicily next. Hitler bought the ruse.
Colin Firth plays Montagu; Matthew Macfadyen takes the role of Montagu’s colleague Charles Cholmondeley, a former RAF pilot. In the movie’s framing, the other two key team members were Hester Leggett (Penelope Wilton) and the MI5 clerk Jean Leslie (Kelly Macdonald). Leslie donated a photo of herself to the cause, “becoming” the dead soldier’s sweetheart.
Screenwriter Michelle Ashford works from the book “Operation Mincemeat” by Ben Macintyre, while carving out a lot of her own narrative for the work and emotional lives of Montagu, Cholmondeley and Leslie. This chaste but tense romantic triangle works roughly 61% of the time. By the book’s account, Montagu was indeed sweet on Leslie. Director John Madden’s film has a lot to juggle, though, and there are times when you think, yes, well, we’d better get back to the mission.
That said: The superb Macdonald is the heartbeat of the movie, so “Operation Mincemeat” benefits from every scene she’s in. The movie’s up to lots more. Montagu’s brother was a Communist sympathizer and, as British intelligence brass believed (based on some evidence), he may have been spying for the Russians. Higher up the chain of command, Simon Russell Beale nails his two scenes as Winston Churchill, without the prosthetic wonders Gary Oldman had in “Darkest Hour.”
In the margins, future spy novelist Fleming (Johnny Flynn) is seen typing away in the recesses of the basement office. By most accounts, the idea for the real-life Operation Mincemeat came from Fleming, though his superior, Rear Admiral John Godfrey, took credit for it. If that’s a lot of names and particulars to track, well, the film is like that, too. It’s the kind of thing where Firth, as Montagu, rattles through a line such as “Yes, it’s simply a variation on the Haversack Ruse,” and then we get a definition of the Haversack Ruse a little while later.
Macfadyen, lately of “Succession,” takes top stealth honors, deftly capturing the rapid-fire story-conference banter with Firth – they’re a two-man writers’ room, in episodic TV parlance – as well as the forlorn, lovelorn loner not above romantic sabotage. This is not the first film to take on this story: In 1956, director Ronald Neame’s heavily fictionalized “The Man Who Never Was” starred Clifton Webb as Montagu.
Like that film, “Operation Mincemeat” takes liberties. All historically based movies do. Call Madden’s version a civilized shell game that accomplishes its mission, more or less in the spirit of how things actually got made up and went down.
I remember a book about this, probably 20 years ago... anyway, the title I remember turned up a 1956 movie about it. :^)
https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/operation-mincemeat-the-man-who-never-was/
https://www.cwgc.org/our-work/blog/the-man-who-never-was-the-true-story-of-operation-mincemeat/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049471/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/man_who_never_was
https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Never-Was/dp/B0007ZEOQE
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=The+Man+Who+Never+Was&i=stripbooks
A good description of the details by Time Army’s WW II YouTube channel.
The important question is, was the corpse that washed up in Spain played by a transgender black womxn, for Hollywood diversity’s sake?
}:-)4
The Man Who Never Was
A great read
Thanks! I’ve got both movies in my Netflix queue. Looks like ‘Operation Mincemeat’ hasn’t been released for home DVD, yet.
That’s all I use; can’t get decent streaming out here in the sticks.
There is a 1950’s or 60s movie about this, specifically about the details in finding an appropriate body to use as the ruse to deliver the documents into German hands.
One of Ian Fleming’s duties as spy was to babysit Dusko Popov when he was carrying money. One day, Popov was carrying $50,000 through a casino in Lisbon, when he was distracted by a loudmouthed rich dude who kept saying he could bet against anyone for any amount. So he put his briefcase on the gambling table and said he would like to bet 50k. The loudmouth suddenly couldn’t cover the bet, and Popov said “well then I assume the house will cover my bet”. Nope. “I hope the house does something about this egregious behavior, it is a tremendous annoyance to those of us who are serious players.”
Dusko was the prototype for James Bond.
https://www.amazon.com/Codename-Tricycle-Second-extraordinary-Double/dp/0436210231
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du%C5%A1ko_Popov
Montage’s brother was a ping-pong official.
Yea watched it last night.. it was ok The love story sub plot is boring
The 1956 movie The Man Who Never Was with Clifton Webb is way better.. same story
Watched it a few nights ago on Netflix. Well worth watching.
Has some of the best British TV series actors in it. Great acting, scenes, and atmosphere. Can’t wait to see it again.
“ That’s all I use; can’t get decent streaming out here in the sticks.”
Try downloading the movie no watching on your computer or tablet…if you have the ability to connect to your TV with it even better.
“ That’s all I use; can’t get decent streaming out here in the sticks.”
Try downloading the movie AND watching on your computer or tablet…if you have the ability to connect to your TV with it even better.
I watched it last night. This review pretty well sums it up. I enjoyed it. Acting was good. This was better than the 1956 version.
There is a sound financial reason for that. I remember when my wife and I saw the movie Pearl Harbor, it was like we were watching two different films. Oh why did they have ruin a good war movie with a sappy love story I thought; oh why did they have to clutter up a good love story with all that war stuff, she thought. Typically, men want explosions, gun play, monsters, and car chases in a film, while women tend to ignore all that and focus on relationships. Films these days cost so much money that producers have to pitch them to both men and women in order to recover their investment.
When I watched PH, all I kept thinking was how historically inaccurate it was.
Collin Firth gives his usual wooden performance. But he is actually better in this than the Kingsmen series where the Queen of Sweden literally says she wants to get f’ed up the ass. How classy is that? I kid you not. At the time I thought, “No wonder Netflix is picking up this show with lines like that! It’s ever progie’s wet dream.” But Netflix is now changing its tune with this “serious” “conservative” piece. Collin Firth should go back to Bridget Jones style of acting. The movie takes liberties and doesn’t answer questions like who was the guy who showed up at the end with knowledge of the picture? We never find out.
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