The Man Who Never Was (1956)
1h 43m | PG-13
The true story of a British effort to trick the Germans into weakening Sicily's defenses before the 1943 attack. A dead soldier is dressed as a British officer and outfitted with faked papers showing that the Allies were intending to invade occupied Greece. His body is put into the sea where it will ultimately drift ashore and the papers be passed along to German Intelligence.
Director: Ronald Neame
Studio: Sumar Productions
Genre: Thriller, War, Drama, History
Video: 720p
Cast
Clifton Webb
as Lt. Cmdr. Ewen Montagu
Gloria Grahame
as Lucy Sherwood
Robert Flemyng
as Lt. George Acres
Josephine Griffin
as Pam
Stephen Boyd
as Patrick O'Reilly
Laurence Naismith
as Adm. Cross
Reviews
A bit like "I Was Monty's Double" (1958), this is a clever tale of British counter-espionage based on a true story. An RNVR officer Ewan Montagu (Clifton Webb) hits on the idea of arranging for the body of a senior British officer to be washed up on the shores of Spain complete with a whole set of falsified documents designed to mislead the Nazis into thinking that Greece was a target for invasion from N. Africa and so as to encourage them to divide their forces. A solid British cast of Robert Flemyng, Geoffrey Keen and Laurence Naismith provide the military backbone to the story and Gloria Grahame plays along well when the Nazi's send a slightly oddly cast Stephen Boyd along as an Irishman charged with investigating whether or not the officer and his documents are real. Ronald Neame presents us with a well directed, scripted and scored depiction of a remarkable tale of human ingenuity and the cast deliver a solid and, at times, quite suspenseful wartime drama.