OPERATION MINCEMEAT
***
Director: John Madden
Screenwriter: Michelle Ashford, based on a book by Ben Macintyre.
Principal cast:
Colin Firth
Matthew Macfadyen
Kelly Macdonald
Penelope Wilton
Johnny Flynn
Jason Isaacs
Country: UK/USA
Classification: M
Runtime: 128 mins.
Australian release date: 12 May 2022.
The story of Operation Mincemeat, a real case of wartime subterfuge by the British to fool Hitler about their European invasion plans, has been filmed before. It was in 1956 and it was called The Man Who Never Was, with Ronald Neame as director, based on a book of the same name by Ewen Montagu. Montagu was intimately involved in the plot and was played in the film by Clifton Webb. Now, there’s a new movie about the incredible scheme, Operation Mincemeat. This time, rather than return to Montagu’s original source material, the scriptwriter, Michelle Ashford, has based her screenplay on a 2010 book by author and columnist Ben Macintyre entitled Operation Mincemeat: The True Spy Story that Changed the Course of World War II and Montagu is played by Colin Firth. It is a truly remarkable tale.
The final plan took place in July 1943 but the seeds had been sown some years earlier. It sprang from what was known as the Trout memo, written by Rear Admiral John Godfrey, the Director of Naval Intelligence (Jason Isaacs), so called because Godfrey likened deception to fly fishing, setting a trap for an unwary target. One of the ideas raised in the memo was to place a corpse holding false papers where it would be found by the enemy and thus mislead them. This became Operation Trojan Horse but when that name was considered a little too obvious, the operation was called Mincemeat, a rather grim allusion. Montagu (Firth) and Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew Macfadyen), both intelligence officers, were appointed to put together a team to develop the plan to the point where it could be a successful hoax, and they worked on nutting out every little detail over six months. It involved acquiring false documents, receipts, love letters (one containing an eyelash) and other ‘pocket litter’, as it’s known in the trade, to make the corpse as real as possible. And, most importantly, they needed a body that looked like it had recently drowned. It was a highly complex operation and everything was riding on it - its aim was to trick the Nazis into believing that the Allies were going to invade Europe via Greece, not the Italian island of Sicily, and convince Hitler to move the bulk of his southern European forces there, so it had to work. As Winston Churchill (Simon Russell Beale) says in Operation Mincemeat, “If the enemy is waiting for us on those beaches, History herself will avert her eyes from the slaughter.”
“It's absolutely true that Operation Mincemeat changed the course of the war. If the Allies had not been able to access Europe, they would have been sunk. At that time, Europe was very heavily defended by the Germans. If the British had not been successful with Operation Mincemeat, there would have been a ghastly bloodbath. Without that brilliant plot, there is no way they would have won the war,” says writer Michelle Ashford. The movie has a terrific cast of top-flight British actors to bring this incredible story to life: the aforementioned Firth, Macfadyen, Isaacs and Russell Beale are joined by Rufus Wright, Kelly Macdonald, Penelope Wilton, Johnny Fynn and Mark Gatiss, among other familiar faces. It’s very much an ensemble piece but all of these actors have important parts to play in the overall plot.
Madden has treated the material faithfully and he obviously decided that this was a story that didn’t require any embellishment, any bells and whistles. Accordingly, he has dealt with it in an almost old-fashioned way, which suits a war movie like this. It harks back to some of the films that came out of England in the 1950s and ‘60s, films like, dare I say it, The Man Who Never Was, and it appeals more to the mind than the heart. It’s important that modern viewers are reminded of the extraordinary sacrifices war demands, some that are well-known and acknowledged and others that are made away from the light. As one of the characters in Operation Mincemeat explains, “In the hidden war, the truth is protected by a bodyguard of lies, its soldiers unseen, its heroes unsung.”
Screenwriter: Michelle Ashford, based on a book by Ben Macintyre.
Principal cast:
Colin Firth
Matthew Macfadyen
Kelly Macdonald
Penelope Wilton
Johnny Flynn
Jason Isaacs
Country: UK/USA
Classification: M
Runtime: 128 mins.
Australian release date: 12 May 2022.
The story of Operation Mincemeat, a real case of wartime subterfuge by the British to fool Hitler about their European invasion plans, has been filmed before. It was in 1956 and it was called The Man Who Never Was, with Ronald Neame as director, based on a book of the same name by Ewen Montagu. Montagu was intimately involved in the plot and was played in the film by Clifton Webb. Now, there’s a new movie about the incredible scheme, Operation Mincemeat. This time, rather than return to Montagu’s original source material, the scriptwriter, Michelle Ashford, has based her screenplay on a 2010 book by author and columnist Ben Macintyre entitled Operation Mincemeat: The True Spy Story that Changed the Course of World War II and Montagu is played by Colin Firth. It is a truly remarkable tale.
The final plan took place in July 1943 but the seeds had been sown some years earlier. It sprang from what was known as the Trout memo, written by Rear Admiral John Godfrey, the Director of Naval Intelligence (Jason Isaacs), so called because Godfrey likened deception to fly fishing, setting a trap for an unwary target. One of the ideas raised in the memo was to place a corpse holding false papers where it would be found by the enemy and thus mislead them. This became Operation Trojan Horse but when that name was considered a little too obvious, the operation was called Mincemeat, a rather grim allusion. Montagu (Firth) and Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew Macfadyen), both intelligence officers, were appointed to put together a team to develop the plan to the point where it could be a successful hoax, and they worked on nutting out every little detail over six months. It involved acquiring false documents, receipts, love letters (one containing an eyelash) and other ‘pocket litter’, as it’s known in the trade, to make the corpse as real as possible. And, most importantly, they needed a body that looked like it had recently drowned. It was a highly complex operation and everything was riding on it - its aim was to trick the Nazis into believing that the Allies were going to invade Europe via Greece, not the Italian island of Sicily, and convince Hitler to move the bulk of his southern European forces there, so it had to work. As Winston Churchill (Simon Russell Beale) says in Operation Mincemeat, “If the enemy is waiting for us on those beaches, History herself will avert her eyes from the slaughter.”
“It's absolutely true that Operation Mincemeat changed the course of the war. If the Allies had not been able to access Europe, they would have been sunk. At that time, Europe was very heavily defended by the Germans. If the British had not been successful with Operation Mincemeat, there would have been a ghastly bloodbath. Without that brilliant plot, there is no way they would have won the war,” says writer Michelle Ashford. The movie has a terrific cast of top-flight British actors to bring this incredible story to life: the aforementioned Firth, Macfadyen, Isaacs and Russell Beale are joined by Rufus Wright, Kelly Macdonald, Penelope Wilton, Johnny Fynn and Mark Gatiss, among other familiar faces. It’s very much an ensemble piece but all of these actors have important parts to play in the overall plot.
Madden has treated the material faithfully and he obviously decided that this was a story that didn’t require any embellishment, any bells and whistles. Accordingly, he has dealt with it in an almost old-fashioned way, which suits a war movie like this. It harks back to some of the films that came out of England in the 1950s and ‘60s, films like, dare I say it, The Man Who Never Was, and it appeals more to the mind than the heart. It’s important that modern viewers are reminded of the extraordinary sacrifices war demands, some that are well-known and acknowledged and others that are made away from the light. As one of the characters in Operation Mincemeat explains, “In the hidden war, the truth is protected by a bodyguard of lies, its soldiers unseen, its heroes unsung.”