Last night's movie was "The Flemish Farm"(1943), about a Belgian Air Force officer who undertakes a dangerous mission into the occupied zone of his country, to rescue a flag that was buried there by his squadron. "A flag"?, you say, and indeed a character in the film wonders the same thing : why is he risking his life for a flag, a piece of cloth? But this is a very honorable and patriotic film, and his reasons for doing so will be explained by the officer himself.
As the movie opens, the narrator informs us that in 1940, the Belgian Air Force was decimated by the invading German forces. What's left are just a handful of planes, pilots, and support troops, now hidden on a farm in Flanders. As the senior officers sit down for a meeting, the Major brings bad news : the Germans have discovered their position and will be advancing on the farm within a day or two. Most of the men are ordered to surrender, but the pilots are to stay and fight. One airman spends the night before the battle with a local girl he's in love with. She speaks of a premonition she's had : "I know I'm never going to see you again". He tries to reassure her : "Don't worry dear. I'll make it back somehow. I always do". This scene reminded me of the wistful conversation between the lovers in Powell & Pressburger's "I Know Where I'm Going", where the characters look askance from one another, lying on a hillside and talking about an uncertain future. In this film they're laying on a haystack, but the positioning and overall mood are similar.
The next day, the airman and his friend take take to the sky during the Luftwaffe bombing raid. Then we fast forward a few years, and the narrator tells us that the Germans did indeed capture the area surrounding the farm, enlarging the Occupied Zone. The Belgian troops did surrender, but some of the remaining pilots were able to escape to England, where they joined the RAF. Both the airman and his friend are among this group, and they meet up for a drink after not having seen one another for a while. The airman tells his friend the story of how, just before leaving the Flemish Farm for the last time, he took down their squadron's flag and buried it on the property, to keep the Germans from desecrating it. He speaks of how badly he wants to go back and dig it up. "Maybe after the war", says the friend. "No. I want to do it now, as soon as possible"!, he replies. To the airman, this is why the flag is more than just a "piece of cloth" : for what it represents. Honor, comradeship, duty, country, FREEDOM, and basic human decency.
We cut again to a future time, a few weeks later. The airman's friend, a pilot himself named Duclos, is visiting his commanding officer, "Major Lessart". He inquires about the airman, who he hasn't seen since the night they shared a drink, and talked about the buried flag. "Sit down, Duclos", says the Major, who then informs him that his comrade has been killed in action just a few days earlier. Duclos is shaken, but regains his composure when he thinks of the flag, and his friend's determination to recover it. He asks the Major for permission to go behind enemy lines, on a one-man commando mission, to regain the flag and bring it back to England. Knowing what it means to him (and to his late friend), the Major agrees to his proposition.
However, he has a question : "I know you're aware of the dangers involved, and the likelihood you won't make it back, but do you even know where it's buried"?
"Not exactly, Sir, only that it's on the farm. But Matagne (the airman) had a girlfriend there. I am hoping she knows".
Now we switch to the action/adventure part of the movie, as Duclos embarks on his mission. He will have to run a gauntlet of Nazi checkpoints to get to the farm, but the Major has provided him with a fake ID card and all the right papers. When he finds Matagne's girl, at first she won't help him. She blames him for Matagne's death (for complex reasons), but ultimately she relents. She does indeed know the burial site of the flag, and helps Duclos dig it up. Now he has to get it back to England, which will prove more difficult than he imagined when the Nazis discover his real identity. Near the end, at a bridge crossing, he even uses a dog to carry the flag through a gorge. I won't describe every narrow escape he experiences, but it's a knuckle biting trek with some ingenious feints by Duclos along the way.
I very much enjoyed "The Flemish Farm", a quietly patriotic movie that doesn't shove it's flag waving in your face, but instead demonstrates the resolve such a symbol can inspire, in this case for all the right reasons. Two Big Thumbs Up. /////
The previous night we saw "Count Five and Die"(1957), a high-stakes spy film involving the Allied invasion of Europe. Nigel Patrick and Jeffery Hunter star as British and American intelligence agents, respectively, operating in a combined effort to throw the Germans off the track of the likely point of entry into the Continent.
Patrick plays "Major Howard" from MI6, the boss of the operation. Hunter is "Captain Ranson", in charge of security, and at first he thinks Patrick is a bumbler, lax in his methods and too trusting in the other members of their team, which is posing as a documentary film production company. Patrick asks Hunter to trust him; after all, he's from British Intelligence, the canniest chessplayers in the business.
And actually, it's Hunter who screws up, by falling in love with a "Dutch" codebreaker (Annemarie Duringer) who is also part of the team. She's really a German spy, and I can tell you that because it's revealed early and the plot line is linear, meaning that there won't be any surprise twists. Instead, the story follows a single thread about the unmasking of Duringer. However, there are a number of bluffs along the way, the double fake being a specialty of MI6. This is something you learn if you watch enough McGoohan.
The idea is to use the front of the film company to leak information that the invasion will begin in Holland. The deception must be believable, so the leak can't be too overt.
Boss man Nigel Patrick is even willing to submit a couple of team members to torture, by sending them into Germany without their cyanide pills, the customary "suicide option" for agents in the field. Not only does the cyanide give them the easy way out, as opposed to being brutalized by Zee Germans, but it also prevents them from talking, from releasing crucial secret information. So why would these British agents be sent to Germany without cyanide?
We'll find out, and the reason is pretty callous. They were sacrificed to make the plan work. By leaking to certain agents that the invasion will begin in Holland, the Nazis then believe this when it is extracted from them under torture. And the agents believe it to begin with, because it was leaked by Nigel Patrick, so it has a ring of truth.
The title is in fact a reference to cyanide, that once you take it, you simply "count to five and die". Jeffery Hunter is excellent as the suspicious security director, who becomes a target for Duringer once she knows she's been made. It's worth mentioning that McGoohan never gets involved romantically on any episode of "Secret Agent", specifically for this reason, that the woman attracted to him is spy more often than not. Did you know that the British TV series "Danger Man" (the original 30 minute version of "Secret Agent") premiered in 1960, two years before James Bond appeared on the scene in "Dr. No"? Yes indeed, and Sean Connery notwithstanding, many fans feel that McGoohan's "John Drake" is closer to Ian Fleming's character as it is written in the books, and that McGoohan should've portrayed Bond in the movies. Being a huge fan, I happen to agree.
But back to "Count Five", it's more of a suspense thriller than an action oriented espionage flick. There aren't a lot of outside locations, mostly just scenes involving a few actors in enclosed settings at any given time, so the focus is on who has the psychological edge. The romantic plot feels just a wee bit forced, because again, you wouldn't expect the serious minded Hunter to get duped into a deceptive romance, but that's a minor complaint. We're big Jefferey Hunter fans here - he was great in in "Sailor of the King" - so he always gets the benefit of the doubt. Filmed in CinemaScope, "Count Five and Die" looks disquieting in noirish black and white. It's based on a true story and gets Two Big Thumbs Up. Watch it on a double bill with "The Flemish Farm". //////
That's all I know for the moment. Have a great evening. Tons of love as always!
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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