Yes, brevity is said to be the soul of wit. But if a review on MouthShut is too long, the members can be trusted to rate it down accordingly. If the people who run the site can remove the limit of 8, 000 characters per review, that would be a welcome improvement.
And I don’t say this just because my first review, which is continued below, is too long. From now on, all my reviews here will be shorter than 8, 000 characters. But whether they should be that short is a determination best left to the people who read them.
REVIEW OF One of Our Aircraft is Missing CONTINUED (Part One is at https://mouthshut.com/readreview.php?rid=15612&r=1 )
His statement is cut off by the roar of Allied aircraft flying overhead. The Dutch woman watches the Nazis run for cover and expresses her gratitude for the air raids that have sent the would-be ’’masters of the world’’ scurrying like rats. The sound of Allied planes, she says, is ’’oil for the burning fire in our hearts.’’
That woman, played with convincing dramatic intensity by the comedian Googie Withers, is one of two standouts in a strong cast. The other is Pamela Brown, who plays the Dutch schoolteacher who first decides the British fliers can be trusted and then organizes her countrymen to help them get home safely.
The main characters are played by six English actors who are charming and likeable, but the movie emphasizes the airmen as a group more than as individuals. One plays a man who in civilian life is retired. Another is an actor and one is a football player, although people in the United States would say he plays soccer. But none of the central male actors is allowed to shine as brightly as Withers or Brown. It is as if the moviemakers chose to highlight their heroes’ ordinariness as a way of saying, ’’We’ll win because we are a nation full of folks just like these guys.’’ If that was their goal, they achieve it.
They accomplish everything they set out to. The movie’s flaws -- the lighting in a pivotal scene near the end is mismatched, and some bits of the fliers’ conversation before they jump out of their plane are inadvertently drowned out by the sound of the engine -- are so minor that they are charming reminders of a time when the tricks of the moviemaking trade were not sophisticated. These tiny blemishes do nothing to dim a movie that glows wonderfully in every other moment.
To instill in their people the determination to see Hitler’s war to its end, Nazi ministers made movies that emphasized seemingly endless phalanxes of marching soldiers and masses of tanks, planes and other weapons. In their movies, the Allies emphasized their people. Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels reportedly envied Mrs. Miniver for the power of its emotional appeal. If Goebbels saw One of Our Aircraft is Missing, he must have been jealous of this masterful piece of entertaining propaganda as well.
One of the enviable touches Powell and Pressburger applied to their movie is in their treatment of the Nazis. The villains in One of Our Aircraft is Missing are hateful and menacing, but they are not monsters.
In this, the movie shares the relative restraint of the British people during World War II. They faced a threat so ominous and direct that it could have justified demonizing their foes, but they did not succumb to that temptation. Almost completely missing from England’s wartime vernacular were the references to Germans as bloodthirsty Huns that were prevalent during the First World War.
Perhaps they were mindful of the many ties between their country and Germany, bonds of history and blood symbolized by the English royal family, which is of German ancestry. Maybe Great Britain wanted to avoid repeating history by not giving into the vindictiveness of the victorious Allies after WWI, who humiliated Germany and helped sow the seeds of the Second World War. It could be that England’s people were confident of victory and were already looking forward to a time when their nation would be allied with a post-war Germany.
Whatever the reasons, One of Our Aircraft is Missing presents Nazis who are cold and hostile, but also people. And rather pitiful people at that. Withers’ character describes how she is able to deceive the Nazis into thinking she is on their side while she works against them: ’’They are an unhappy people . . . They want to believe someone is their friend.’’
One of Our Aircraft is Missing provides a timely reminder that one can defeat enemies without dehumanizing them. It also provides engaging, inspiring entertainment that holds up well six decades later.