The Man Who Never Was

While O'Reilly is waiting in his room to see if he'll be arrested, the light level outside varies continually over the hour of movie time.

It starts in the evening.

When O'Reilly looks out and sees the drunk it's already quite dark.

But when the special branch officers arrive and hide outside, it's quite bright.

The scene is where William Martin's father is saying good-bye to his body in the hospital and talking with Ewen Montagu.

As the father leaves the room, the shadow of the mike is well in shot on the wall behind him.

Though the film is set in 1943, contemporary cars can be seen in a couple of location shots in Londonwhen Montagu and Admiral Cross come out from their meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1950s cars parked in the background); and again when O'Reilly is sitting on the park bench ('50s cars pass on the street behind).

The British submarine that releases the corpse of "Major Martin" is completely dry immediately after it surfaces from the ocean depths.

As the canister holding the corpse of "Major Martin" is winched out of the HMS Seraph, the last line of lettering on the side is seen to be mostly worn away and nearly illegible.

In the very next scene as the canister is lifted onto the submarine's deck, the lettering is suddenly completely legible once more - "SPECIAL F.

SHIPMENT".

When Lucy is sitting at the piano talking about Joe who O'Reilly mistakes for Wm Martin, she is holding a drink.

The camera breaks to Pam and O'Reilly and when it returns to Lucy, she is no longer holding the glass.

In the scene where Montagu receives a telephone call from Gen.

Nye summoning him to 10 Downing Street, there is a calendar in the background that reads Friday, April 12.

In 1943, when this movie takes place, April 12 fell on a Monday.

When given a list of possible operation names to use, the name Operation Jubilee is listed as available.

Operation Jubilee, in fact, was used the previous year by the Allies, in what is more commonly known as the Dieppe Raid.

Commander Montagu, Lieutenant Acres, Lucy and Pam are shown attending the show although two stubs of the four tickets were put into a pocket of the dead man.

Handsome movie, made in the 1950s, about Operation Mincemeat, the successful deception plan concocted by the British during World War II to send a corpse to the Mediterranean with false invasion plans. The Germans swallowed it whole, and left Sicilia (where the invasion finally took place) relatively unguarded.

Of all the war movies I remember seeing back in the 50's, this one had a haunting quality - it still does.This is as classy a piece of filmmaking to come from the 1950's and was head-and-shoulders over many of the war films made at the time.

A bit like "I Was Monty's Double" (1958), this is a clever tale of British counter-espionage based on a true story. An RNVR officer Ewan Montagu (Clifton Webb) hits on the idea of arranging for the body of a senior British officer to be washed up on the shores of Spain complete with a whole set of falsified documents designed to mislead the Nazis into thinking that Greece was a target for invasion from N.

In order to put the Axis powers on the defensive the Allies decide to invade Sicily. However, recognizing the possibility of severe casualties, an elaborate plan is devised to trick the Germans into believing that, rather than invading Sicily, they are going to invade Greece instead.

I really enjoyed and appreciated this excellent film, that is based on a true British disinformation plan during W W II, code named Operation Mincemeat. The plan by British Intelligence was to deceive the German high command into thinking the Allied invasion of Sicily would take place elsewhere.

I first saw this film shortly after it was released, when I was fourteen years old. Seeing it again sixty-five years later, I would say that it has lost none of its impact as a powerful and moving production.

Clifton Webb is the embodiment of the stiff upper lip, never displaying undue emotions even at a sidesplitting London play. He doesn't just walk across a room, he marches.

True story of a British attempt to trick the enemy into weakening Sicily's defenses before the 1943 attack, using a dead man with faked papers.I had heard of Operation Mincemeat, but did not really know much about it.

I just watched the movie after reading Ben Macintyre's Operation Mincemeat, Harmon, 2010. Assuming his account is accurate, it took much longer to do the planning and find and prepare a body than the movie indicates.