With a fact-based WWII story shaped by Thorold Dickinson, director of a superb QUEEN OF SPADES/’49, and helmed by Brian Desmond Hurst of the best of all CHRISTMAS CAROL films (1951), two under-the-radar British talents give this modest wartime actioner more than modest effect. Alec Guinness makes a pleasingly unlikely pilot hero trying for Cairo in 1942 when he’s waylaid in Malta, the small island nation playing an outsized role as an irritant to German & Italian war efforts in North Africa. Holding on by a thread thru bombing runs and siege, Jack Hawkins (in regulation shorts, of course) commands the British forces on the island who can only wait for supplies & fighter planes to get thru, advised on the situation largely from photo pilot flights like the ones Guinness carries out, finding disturbing train conveys when he disobeys instructions. A couple of structural problems prove tougher to overcome. One involves the brother of a local girl Guinness falls for (he’s spying, a tangent storyline that threatens to take over the film); another leaves Guinness literally out of the picture for two of the last three reels. Even in an ensemble piece, this feels misjudged. (An archeologist back in England, no doubt Guinness is having a fine time investigating Maltese artifacts. Maybe digging up a Maltese Falcon! But it does give the last act a stop/start feel.) But on its own terms, this is generally well handled (good explosive effects & smoothly inter-cut docu-footage), and doesn’t push too hard. Even when Guinness’s girl is shown working one of those ‘Map Boards,’ moving around the little token representing her man in the air. As WWII war films go, this one’s . . . well, nice.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Best WWII Map Board can be found in SINK THE BISMARCK!/’60. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/07/sink-bismarck-1960.html
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