The Man Who Never Was

The death of director/cinematographer Ronald Neame last year reminded me of a crackerjack thriller he directed in 1956, The Man Who Never Was. Ewen Montagu was a British wartime intelligence officer who spearheaded an operation to divert German attention from the planned Allied invasion of Sicily to Greece by planting some unorthodox evidence…a body. The details make for some exciting ‘true story’ stuff, with Clifton Webb doing a great job as Monatagu and a young Stephen Boyd, eerily menacing as a German spy. The Cinemascope cinematography by Oswald Morris looks stunning, though I’m sure it helped to have a director who was also a D.P. 

8.5/10

Storming Juno

One of the greatest moments in Canadian military history was their part in the Allied attack on D-Day. The Canadians were to storm a section of the French beaches at Normandy code-named Juno and did so with success but great losses.  Storming Juno is a short (55 minutes) television docudrama that attempts on a small budget and scale to tell this story and is relatively successful.  Although not long enough for us to get attached to the three main real-life characters (whose stories are based on actual letters and interviews), we nonetheless get a very good idea of the difficulties faced by these brave men and the battle scenes, effectively filmed in southern Ontario on Lake Huron, evoke the much larger budgeted Saving Private Ryan and Band Of Brothers.  The added bonus of a half-hour’s worth of interviews with Juno survivors is what ultimately won me over.  Recommended.

7/10