Welcome back to the Friday Night Movie slot. For this week’s offering I have for you a WWII movie but one with a very interesting and dramatic twist. Circle of Deception made in 1960 is quite different from the usual World War II movies that were made in the 1950’s and probably reflects the more questioning view of the war that was starting to come about fifteen years after the war ended.
The movie’s plot revolves around the need to feed the Germans false information before the D Day landings in 1944. The Allies cannot risk the Germans having lots of troops in the vicinity of the real landing areas in Normandy and run a disinformation campaign to convince the Germans that the expected invasion of Europe will occur in a place other than the real location.
In ‘Circle of Deception’ a hard nosed and cynical senior British intelligence officer, Captain Rawson played by Harry Andrews, realises that there is a need to get the Maquis or French Resistance to tie up German troops in strategically useless areas. To do this the Resistance were to engage in attacks that would draw German troops away from the real landing areas. Unfortunately the whole Resistance unit that was to do this was compromised, presumably by an informer, and the entire group is arrested and tortured by the Germans.
Captain Rawson realises that this setback means that the disinformation needs to be inserted into the German intelligence system by some other means. In order to do this he looks for a Special Operations Executive who is likely to crack under pressure of torture and give up the information to the Gestapo. In cooperation with an ATS officer, Lucy Bowen played by Suzy Parker Rawson visits an SOE training centre and picks out a likely candidate, a man with known flaws, Captain Paul Raine played by Bradford Dillman. Captain Raine is unaware that the job he is tasked with is to carry false information nor that it is part of Rawson’s plan that he be captured by the Germans and give up the false military plans.
Captain Raine parachutes into occupied France and although he manages to evade capture for a while, eventually he is captured by the Germans and Raine’s nightmare begins. His tormentor is a Nazi officer called Captain Stein played by the late Sir Robert Stephens and Raine under torture gives up the false information to Stein, to Raine’s great shame.
This is one of those movies that I suppose could be called a forgotten gem of a movie. The plot has many twists and turns and the writing and direction is excellent. The acting, as one can gather by the main cast, is extremely good. Yes there’s a few errors in things like uniforms and flags etc, but apart from that this really is an excellent and gripping film. The end is a shock and well done and the manner that the tale is told also good. I really enjoyed this film and I hope that you all enjoy it too.
