The Man Who Never Was (1956)

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.

Awesome real life saga. I was fortunate to have known the Captain of the submarine, George. He passed this last week a month before his 92 birthday. He was a true hero, one of the nicest men I ever met, and a loving husband and father. He has left a real impact on other people's lives. A truly nice man. He had told us the story before we ever saw the movie, so it was really interesting to us. I found it and bought it for him and his family, but he didn't get a chance to watch it. His family did and it just made them love him even more. Brilliant idea that worked to fool the Germans. They had to get real close to shore to make sure the body got discovered. Very risky, but they did it. Most of the movie is about the plan being put together, but we loved his part best. He wasn't the only hero, but his role was what interested us, because we knew him. It is a good movie and a true story, so enjoy!

This is an exciting and unique WWII spy thriller based on Operation Mincemeat - an attempt by the allies to feed false information to the Nazis to divert attention from the upcoming invasion of Sicily.It's really fascinating to see how they planted information on a dead body ( a fake spy) to feed the false documents to the Nazis.A real scene stealer is Stephen Boyd who plays the Irish spy who working for the Nazis checks out the veracity of the dead man's identity. Politics makes strange bedfellows and it is interesting to remember the there were a few Irish who sided the Nazis against the British because they had a common enemy. The scenes where he talks to the "girl friend" are quite scary.A movie with a good story can be more fascinating and tense than any of the new action spy thrillers like the Bourne series.

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.