Operation Amsterdam (1960)

"Operation Amsterdam" from 1959 stars Peter Finch, Alexander Knox, Tony Britton and Eva Bartok in a Rank film based on a true incident. In 1940, there was a British move to get industrial diamonds out of Holland so that the Germans could not make use of them.A British Major (Britton) travels to England with two diamond experts (Knox and Finch) to persuade diamond merchants in Amsterdam to give over their industrial diamonds, which would be brought to England.There is danger all around them, with soldiers, shootings, and bombings everywhere. At a harbor, a young woman, Anna (Eva Bartok) tries to drive into the water to commit suicide after her fiancée's parents are killed, as she blames herself for inadvertently causing their death. The men are able to stop her and make use of her car, and her knowledge of Amsterdam, all the while not sure if they can even trust her. No one, in fact, can trust anyone, since German parachuters are disguised as Dutch soldiers.Jan (Finch's) father, who is a diamond merchant in Amsterdam, appeals to his circle to relinquish their stashes so that the major and the men can bring them to a destroyer on which Churchill is allowing them to travel. The time is short -- will the merchants cooperate? Or have they come a long way for not very much? I found this film very exciting and very moving. The atmosphere was tense throughout. Peter Finch gives a wonderful performance as Jan, and he was so handsome and had good chemistry with the beautiful, mysterious Anna of Bartok. Alexander Knox seemed to be an afterthought, not given much to do.Knowing what the Dutch suffered during the war made this an emotional experience watching the courage of the people who helped the men along the way. This wasn't the officially formed resistance, but an earlier group who didn't want the Nazis in Holland and probably were the core people when the official Resistance began.Highly recommended. I think the story is compelling enough to overcome editing criticisms, the time of release criticisms and the like. Powerful stories are timeless.

From a purely historical point of view, "Operation Amsterdam" is a really cool film. That's because most movies about WWII focus on big, loud and obvious topics--like battles. However, "Operation Amsterdam" is instead about an equally serious problem--what to do with all the diamonds (particularly the industrial grade ones) in Amsterdam--the capital of the diamond industry. This is because lots of war-time machinery (such as precision drill bits) depended on these diamonds and the British were scared the Germans would confiscate them when they overran Holland in 1940.As far as the film itself goes, it is mildly interesting and has some very tense moments. My only reservation is that the film, at times, seems a tad bland. While it stars Peter Finch--a rather distinguished Oscar-winning actor. Here, however, he isn't given a lot to do other than hide from Germans and Nazi sympathizers. This is not a huge complaint, but the overall film is a bit on the sterile side. Worth seeing, yes, but not a rousing adventure, that's for sure.

It shouldn't be forgotten that anti - Semitism was quite widespread in Dutch society prior to the arrival of the Nazis.It is by no means accurate to describe the reception given to the German troops as a heroes' welcome,but there were a significant number of people in Holland willing to adopt a pragmatism that perhaps seems a tad too accommodating in retrospect. You will see little of this in "Operation Amsterdam" set in the first days of the Nazi invasion where most of the population seem to possess a very sensible desire to put as much distance between themselves and the advancing Germans as possible.And who can blame them with the Luftwaffe's penchant for strafing refugee columns all over Europe. In the circumstances it took not a little courage for the Dutch diamond merchants to hand over their stock of industrial diamonds to the British rather than curry favour with the Nazi hordes already pouring across the dykes. Led by a not really up to the job Tony Britton (he makes a right pigs' breakfast of doing away with a Dutch soldier),they are landed by destroyer during an air raid and make their way to Amsterdam in a grand Mercedes convertible driven by Miss Eva Bartok whom they have saved from a watery grave after she has attempted suicide on seeing her fiancé's boat bombed by the Germans.Presumably as part of the grieving process she spends the rest of the day(it seems much longer) driving the boys round the city getting shot at. "Operation Amsterdam" gives every impression of having been fatally mauled in the editing suite.Little master Melvyn Hayes appears as from a hole in the stage,plays a pipe organ,gets shot,smiles bravely and disappears again.Mr Peter Finch's coat collar goes up and down seemingly at random,a wheel change to the Merc whilst under fire from a Messerschmidt goes along at a pace that is almost indecent......... Alexander Knox has a certain rueful charm,Miss Bartok plenty of pluck,Mr Finch looks a little bewildered for most of the movie,possibly wondering why Mr Knox is with them in the first place as he seems to have no point. John le Mesurier is sublimely out of place as a Dutch Colonel with a mysterious smile,but it's nice to see him anyway. Had the picture been made 10 years earlier it might have had a bit more relevance,but a Britain on the cusp on the 60s and with most of Europe moving towards some sort of detente it was not the time to be reminding people of a time when its citizens were at each others' throats. Miss Bartok I believe was a "celebrity" here in the UK for being a close friend of the Marquis of Milford Haven.When we look at her then,we are seeing a proto Victoria Beckham,but I'm not sure that she'd choose to be remembered that way,rather as a mysterious Euro - enigma driving her convertible through the sun - dappled streets of Amsterdam before kissing Peter Finch goodbye and disappearing - mysteriously.

'Operation Amsterdam' is one that had gotten away from me. I thought I'd seen just about every WWII movie that ever was. So when I came across it on DVD, I felt nicely piqued.And when I watched it, I felt nicely surprised, decently entertained.The plot isn't terribly exciting, the script could have benefitted from a wee bit of polishing, but the production works well because tension is strung taut and relaxed, and strung taut and relaxed again and again throughout the film.Peter Finch and Alexander Knox are two Dutch diamond experts who sail in a British destroyer with an English secret agent: destination Amsterdam. Mission: come out, before the Nazis surround or take the city, with the Dutch inventory of industrial diamonds. Object: deprive Nazi war industry of the tool-cutting, metal-shaping worth of those diamonds.In the haunting desertion of orderly Amsterdam streets, the intrepid trio meets with Dutch diamond merchants, scampers in and out of the clutches of Dutch fifth columnists, mucks in with Dutch resistance fighters, and warily accepts guidance throughout from a Dutchwoman whom they cannot, at first, trust (played with restrained charm by Eva Bartok). Some of the diamond merchants are, as they've always been in Amsterdam, Jews. The point is made about Nazi persecution of Jews and about the dilemmas many Jews faced when the Nazis occupied their countries, but in 'Operation Amsterdam' the points are made unsentimentally - which highlights the stark panic, fear, and despair many Jews felt in that baleful time and circumstance. Indeed, throughout the film characters are beset by choices, choices they must make because time, as the story development lets us know clearly, is running out for everybody in the Netherlands.It's the storytelling and the actors' understatement - nothing is James Bondish about these ordinary characters finding themselves in extraordinary circumstances - that make the story absorbing, believable. Abetted by the unsettling counterpoint between carnivalesque Dutch pierement (organ grinders) music - happy music playing in a bleak city, over throngs of departing refugees, during the agents' tense search for and gathering of the diamonds - and by terse snare drumming, the story keeps ratcheting up its grip on the viewer, holding tight tempo with the agents' mission and their dedication to accomplishing it.The only serious flaw in the film's visuals owes to most of the deserted street shots having to be filmed immediately after dawn (else Amsterdam's population would be thronging its thoroughfares). This yields a bit of a crazy quilt mix of shots having long shadows intercut with shots having midday, short shadows - supposedly happening in the same instant. Otherwise, the camerawork and editing jive nicely with the unfolding of the plot.Also ramping up the tension is the script's bareness: one really must think a lot - sometimes too much - about what's going on, about what's coming next, but the need to think that way lends the viewer a heightened sense of uncertainty, danger, and dread. It also helps that the scriptwriter avoided the worst cliches of the genre: the scenes of Eva Bartok and Peter Finch are treated as bare-bones, wartime heartbreak rather than as apocryphal "we fell in love in battle" nonsense.Generally, props are first-rate, except for Dutch soldiers and resistance fighters toting German MP-40 machine pistols which were in short enough supply in the 1940 Wehrmacht, and for a few 1950's-era military trucks. The other weaponry is all true to period: Dutch army M1895 Mannlicher rifles, Luger pistols, period revolvers and such. Also, Dutch uniforms and personal gear are precisely from the story's 1940 time-frame. The only other minor quibble is one found in quite a few late-50's and 1960's WWII films: a four-seater Messerschmitt Bf.108 touring aeroplane stands in for the later, design-derivative Bf.109 fighter (See 'Von Ryan's Express', and 'The Longest Day' for more examples of this substitution - which was necessary since there were then no restored, flyable Bf.109E aircraft.).'Operation Amsterdam' hasn't dated nearly as badly as have so many other WWII films made in the twenty years following the war because it sticks to its story, because it tells its story without frills, excursions into moralizing, or distracting subplots. Though it didn't benefit from a larger budget, as did 'The Counterfeit Traitor' which was filmed in the same era, 'Operation Amsterdam' delivers the goods.Summed up: Agents voyage to Amsterdam to deprive Nazis of diamonds, return to us with a minor gem of a movie.