ONE OF OUR AIRCRAFT IS MISSING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 174, 23 October 1942, Page 13

ONE OF OUR AIRCRAFT IS MISSING

(B.E.F.)

OME readers may recall that when I criticised 49th Parallel for having back-fired as propaganda by encouraging audiences to feel sympathetic

‘toward the six Nazis who were trying to escape from Canada, I suggested that from the propaganda angle it would have been much better if the story had dealt with six British soldiers, sailors, or airmen trying to escape from Europe. This idea must have occurred to the producers of 49th Parallel, for in One of Our Aircraft is Missing they depict the adventures of six members of an R.A.F. bomber crew who land by parachute in Holland when their engines give out following a raid on Stuttgart. This time, of course, my old favourite, the psychological law of sympathy for the hunted, is in full operation in favour of the airmen; and there is an additional difference from 49th Parallel in that the people of Holland are actively friendly and that the British party wins through. Otherwise, the general structure of the two films is. almost identical. There is a series of episodes in which the R.A.F. men move from place to place in Holland, eventually reach the coast, put to sea, and are picked up by a British ship. In this film, however, the initiative is almost all with the Dutch, who organise the escape, pass the flyers on from one group of patriots: to the next, and take the lead in outwitting the German army of occupation. The British characters remain curiously im-personal-almost, one might say,’ " un-heroic"-and this in spite of the fact that one of them is Eric Portman, who dominated 49th Parallel with his portrayal of boundless resourcefulness. and. energy as the leader of the Nazi party.

As a result, most of the interest of the film, to my mind, is centred on the good people of Holland who, with the exception of one Quisling, are shown to be united against the Germans and full of clever dodges of passive resistance. Two particularly good Dutch types are a young school-mistress (Pamela Brown), and an older woman (Googie Withers), who .has_ ingratiated herself. with the invaders in order to fight them, but not a single character in the story is developed fully enough to be more than a cameo. This fact, together with the episodic nature of the action, and the fact that some of the dialogue seems hard to follow, creates a feeling of shapelessness and of vagueness of purpose about the whole film. At the same time, One of Our Aircratt is Missing is still good entertainment as well as good propaganda.