Product: The Man Who Never Was (2005)
Rating: 3.0
The Body on the Beach
The body of a dead British officer washes ashore on a Spanish beach; he has on him documents alluding to British forces landing in Greece. Before the Nazis rush from Sicily (where the Brits actually will land) to Greece, they send an agent to London to determine if the intelligence is genuine. That's the intrigue in this intriguing docudrama financed by Hollywood (thus the miscasting of Clifton Webb and Gloria Grahame) but made by English director Ronald Neame on real locations using English actors.Cast against type, Webb is suitably correct. Grahame, an Oscar winner for "The Bad and the Beautiful," however, is embarrassing in a key but contrived role as a librarian whose flyer lover is killed. As the Nazi agent snooping around London, the handsome Stephen Boyd dominates the last quarter of the film with steely charm, reminding us again what a loss his early death was to films in the 1950s. And it's nice to see Sir Cyrl Cusack and Joan Hickson (later Miss Marple on television) in bit parts.What's not so nice (in the version I saw) is the shameful DVD transfer, which begins and ends in the original Cinemascope but throughout reformats to full screen, diminishing the reach of the actual locations and the re-creation of wartime London. This true story, especially the invention of a non-person's whole life, ranks with John LeCarre's tales and "Five Fingers" (still unreleased on DVD) as one of Hollywood's better espionage films. "The Man Who Never Was," considering what he achieved, deserved more respect.