I do like the actor Jack Hawkins. He was brilliant at playing archetypal British men and as many will be aware excelled as the captain of the fictional WWII fighting ships Compass Rose and Saltash Castle In the movie ‘The Cruel Sea’. However the role he plays in this week’s Friday Night Movie was for me a bit different as he plays a senior Nazi officer who is not all he seems.

Jack Hawkins plays a British born German citizen who rises up the ranks of the German military and ends up a general in Hitler’s army. Hawkins character, General Alex Schottland although a seasoned military man is not a dyed in the wool Nazi and uses his position as a senior officer in Germany to feed information to the allies using a network of contacts who can smuggle messages out of Germany to the War Office in London.

The plot covers not just Schottland’s actions of derring do but also how he has to work very hard to not expose himself or put himself in the position where he could let something slip. You get some sense from Mr Hawkins performance of a man under considerable stress keeping his true allegience secret from the enemy.

I had not heard of this movie until recently but I was delighted to discover it and I hope that you enjoy it as much as I have done.