Uriah43 In order to put the Axis powers on the defensive the Allies decide to invade Sicily. However, recognizing the possibility of severe casualties, an elaborate plan is devised to trick the Germans into believing that, rather than invading Sicily, they are going to invade Greece instead. This will hopefully result in the Germans moving some of their army from Sicily to Greece. But first, the British need a corpse which has recently died of pneumonia for which they plan to put in the sea near the Spanish coast with the hope that the Germans will discover the body. Attached to his arm will be a briefcase with top secret orders detailing the mythical invasion of Greece. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was an entertaining World War 2 film which kept my attention from start to finish. I especially enjoyed the scene involving "Lucy Sherwood" (Gloria Grahame) and the Nazi spy named "Patrick O'Reilly" (Stephen Boyd) which carried a good balance of suspense and irony. In any case, this is a decent film for those who might enjoy a drama of this type and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.

tomsview Of all the war movies I remember seeing back in the 50's, this one had a haunting quality - it still does.This is as classy a piece of filmmaking to come from the 1950's and was head-and-shoulders over many of the war films made at the time. The story tells how at a critical time in WW2, British Naval officer, Ewan Montagu (Clifton Webb), developed a plan to fool the Nazis into believing the Allies were about to attack Greece instead of Sicily. It entailed allowing a dead body dressed as an officer carrying false papers to drift ashore in Spain, which although neutral was full of Nazi spies.The basic story is true, but the movie threw in fictional elements including a romantic subplot involving Gloria Grahame, and another with Stephen Boyd as an Irish spy sent to check the identity of the body. The extra scenarios helped give the film depth and tension.Overriding everything however, is the ominous mood that starts with the opening scene as the body washes ashore, and the resonant voice of a narrator speaks lines from a 500-year-old ballad "The Battle of Otterburn":"Last night I dreamed a deadly dream, beyond the Isle of Sky, I saw a dead man win a fight, and I think that man was I."Alan Rawsthorne's haunting score heightens the eeriness of that opening scene. His music was used judiciously throughout the film, but it would have been a different movie without it.There are a number of memorable scenes in the film: dressing the body during the bombing raid; the submariners reading a service before releasing the body; Montagu visiting the grave at the end; but the most telling of all is when Montagu asks a father if he may use his son's body for a purpose that is so secret that he can't tell him why.A powerful theme running through the film is that the identity of the dead man was never to be revealed, and that the body is to be treated with as much respect as possible.50 years later, documents were uncovered that revealed his identity and his name - in many ways an even sadder story than in the film; he was homeless, abandoned and unclaimed.Clifton Webb gave a brilliant performance as a very precise Englishman - with little of his trademark snobbishness, but Stephen Boyd just about steals the show as a handsome, charming Irishman who has no qualms about helping the Nazis, if it means damaging the British hold on Ireland.As I sat as a 9-year old in my suburban cinema seat in 1956 watching all that calm stoicism, superior ingenuity, perfect discipline and belief in a just cause unfold on the screen, I knew why our side had won the war."The Man Who Never Was" is a fascinating movie on many levels.

dougdoepke British Intelligence crafts a plan to use a dead body to mislead German Intelligence on plans to invade southern Europe.The movie amounts to a meticulous account of a British ruse to fool the Germans during WWII. Ordinarily, such a detailed narrative would be taxing, but not so here. Deceiving the Nazis requires maximum planning, no loose threads allowed. Thus we're drawn into the process of making sure no risk of exposure is left uncovered. After all, the lives of thousands of Allied troops are at stake. At first I thought the Gloria Grahame role (Lucy) was just an add-on for marquee purposes, but her thread is cleverly woven into the success of the overall plan. In fact, she has the only really dramatic role in the film. On the other hand, Clifton Webb gives a carefully controlled, quite persuasive performance as the plan's no-nonsense mastermind. Except for Grahame's two key emotional scenes, however, acting is secondary to the unfolding narrative. Story here is paramount, thanks to Ronald Neame's smooth direction. Has British Naval Intelligence in fact covered all possible slip-ups, or will Nazi agent (Boyd) manage to find a hole in the plan. All in all, it's an intriguing storyline based on a true WWII episode.

Andres Salama Handsome movie, made in the 1950s, about Operation Mincemeat, the successful deception plan concocted by the British during World War II to send a corpse to the Mediterranean with false invasion plans. The Germans swallowed it whole, and left Sicilia (where the invasion finally took place) relatively unguarded.Made by Hollywood with relatively unknown actors, this film is very entertaining, even if some of the things here turned out not to be true, though this was probably not the fault of the filmmakers. For instance, the corpse that was used in the operation belonged to a Welshman instead of a Scot (an alcoholic tramp, in actuality), and his family was not notified. And the last half hour deals with the story of an Irish spy in London working for the Germans that, while entertaining, is completely invented.More a spy film than a war film, it can be compared, as some people in the comments have noted, to the best movies by Alfred Hitchcock, in the way the film builds suspense over the operation. The beautiful color photography is an enormous plus; since this was filmed just a decade after the conflict ended, this allows you to have a very good idea of what London must have looked like in the war in full colors. Some might find the patriotism in the film a bit old fashioned, but I found it refreshing in comparison with the constant cynicism and weariness of contemporary movies.