Circle of Deception (1960)

****SPOILERS**** The movie shows the lengths those during war time would go to achieve their missions. Even in the case of tricking the bright eyed and bushy tailed Canadian Leut. Paul Raine, Bradford Dillman, to not only go beyond the call of duty but death itself in unknowingly giving false information to the enemy by having it beaten and tortured out of him. Dropped into Nazi occupied France in the spring of 1944 Raine, who speaks perfect Franch, is told to contact the French underground in coordination with their attacks of German installations as the allies pull off their D-Day invasion. Unknown to Raine is that he's being set up with false information to be caught and tortured by the Nazi Gestopo to brake down and spill the beans on the invasion of Western Europe. That to make them think that the invasion is to take place some 200 miles away from it's original landing points!Thinking he's doing the right thing Raine endures the most brutal torture including being water-boarding, a major war crime according to the Geneva War Accords of 1929, that Nazis could dish out. Only after the poison pill he was given by his boss Capt. Thomas Rawson, Harry Andrews, turned out to be a dud and thus prevented him from peacefully popping off and meeting his maker that the by now completely broken Raine finally gave in. Rescued by the French underground and given free passage to Tangier's Morocco after the war Raines is now a completely defeated and broken man feeling he let down his men in spilling the beans about where the cross channel invasion was to take place.***SPOILERS*** It's when the person who help set, together with Capt. Rawson, Raine up Leut. Bowen, Suzy Parker,that the poor and confused Raine up came to see him at the Bal Aldo Bar & Hotel that he finally got the story straight: He's in fact a hero who gave his all including his sanity for the allied cause not a coward who sold his men, after being brutally tortured, out to the enemy! This was no surprise to those of us watching but only to Raine who in his depression never bothered to even read a newspaper or listen to a radio broadcast after he was rescued from his captors. And in fact thought all that time that he screwed up the D-Day invasion plans by the allies which in fact he helped make a complete and smashing success!

Bradford Dillman is a soldier chosen for a dangerous mission in "A Circle of Deception," a 1960 film also starring Suzy Parker, Harry Andrews and Robert Stephens. The story is told in flashback as Paul Raine (Dillman) remembers his assignment after a visit by his ex-lover, Lucy (Parker).In order to divert German troops from an attack site, Paul is chosen because according to his psychological profile, he will break under torture and give the Germans the information the Allies want them to have. Paul knows his mission is risky, but Lucy, an assistant to the captain (Andrews) who thought up this scheme, knows the entire story. She's enlisted to go out with Paul, since he seems interested, and evaluate if he's really the man for the job. She becomes a little more involved than planned.Filmed in black and white, this isn't a big budget movie, but it's good. Dillman was a young star then under contract to 20th Century Fox, but despite being both attractive and a good actor, with the studio system abolished, he found most of his success in television. Parker, one of the first supermodels, was a staggering beauty who was given several opportunities in Hollywood. She was lousy in every one of them. Like Grace Kelly, she had a cool, sophisticated look, and also like Grace Kelly, in person she had a fantastic sense of humor and a wonderful personality - and like Grace Kelly, she never got one role to showcase them.Though Dillman and Harry Andrew are both very good, it's Robert Stephens as the German captain who imprisons Paul that gives the most chilling performance. A brilliant stage actor, he's a knockout in this, and one wishes he had pursued more film work before his death in 1995. He could have had an Oscar-level career.All in all, "A Circle of Deception" is very good, and the black and white helps to keep up the British wartime atmosphere. Dillman and Parker met during the making of this film, married in 1963, had 3 children, and stayed married until Parker's death in 2003. Her last work on film was in a 1970 "Night Gallery" episode, in which she looked absolutely gorgeous, but through the '50s, '60s (and possibly into the '70s) she was on every magazine cover and in every fashion layout imaginable.The torture scenes are not for the feint of heart - to be honest, I fast-forwarded through them. The rest of the movie is both interesting and suspenseful.

This movie is a downer so I understand why many people didn't like it. But nevertheless it is important because it pioneered the concept of the sympathetic anti-hero as the main character in movies.Spoilers ahead: Bradford Dillman's character is infiltrated into occupied France by the Allies (the devious British intelligence, actually). His mission: To prepare the French Resistance for the coming invasion which required him to eliminate a mole within the movement. The alleged enemy collaborator turns out to be a kindly and affable fellow who saves Dillman from eating cat disguised as rabbit in a restaurant. The old Frenchman explained that what he ordered was unlikely to be rabbit considering the rationing and severe shortage of food in occupied France. That scene is comic with the French guy saying "meow" after Dillman ordered rabbit. I believe the Darnell-Howard TV version, Deception, had the same scene.In any case, Dillman is captured by the Germans, no doubt through the machinations of British intelligence. As planned by his controllers, under torture he spills what he believed were the details of the planned invasion of France by the Allies through Calais. Of course, we now know that Eisenhower's staff chose Normandy for the invasion landing. The Germans scramble to protect Calais while the Allies invade Normandy. Dillman is rescued by a commando unit and taken back behind Allied lines where he is congratulated for his contribution in making the invasion a success.The hitch is that, he found out that he killed an innocent man. The old Frenchman was not a collaborator after all.If you like spy-war movies with double deceptions see also 36 Hours starring James Garner and Rod Taylor.

Bradford Dillman is an American tapped for a dangerous mission behind enemy lines in the campaign of deception leading up to D-Day--except that he's only been told half the story by his superiors. The story is based on real-life exploits documented in Anthony Cave Brown's book *Bodyguard of Lies,* (the title of which was based on Churchill's famous comment, "In wartime, truth is so precious that she must always be attended by a bodyguard of lies"). Dillman is completely convincing as the spy who is selected precisely because his psychological profile shows that he *will* eventually break under torture. The depiction of torture itself is pretty grueling, by the way, especially for 1961, and one scene in particular was parodied in the 1984 Abrahams-Zucker movie *Top Secret!* (with Val Kilmer in the Dillman part). Incidentally, Dillman and his co-star, Suzy Parker, who was the top model in America at the time, and embarking on a film and television career, fell in love while making this movie and married shortly thereafter; she gave up both her modeling and acting career for domestic life as Mrs. Dillman not long afterward.