The Man Who Never Was

4/3/19561h 43m

Theatrical Release (US)

~ The most fiendish plot ever conceived! The most amazing "human being" ever created! The most diabolical phantom-- ~

Overview:

The true story of a British effort to trick the Germans into weakening Sicily's defenses before the 1943 attack. A dead soldier is dressed as a British officer and outfitted with faked papers showing that the Allies were intending to invade occupied Greece. His body is put into the sea where it will ultimately drift ashore and the papers be passed along to German Intelligence.

Director:

Ronald Neame

Status:

Released

Language:

English

Buget:

$0.00

Revenue:

$0.00

Key words:

bank
world war ii
dead body

Cast

Clifton Webb

~ as ~

Lt. Cmdr. Ewen Montagu

Gloria Grahame

~ as ~

Lucy Sherwood

Robert Flemyng

~ as ~

Lt. George Acres

Josephine Griffin

~ as ~

Pam

Stephen Boyd

~ as ~

Patrick O'Reilly

Laurence Naismith

~ as ~

Adm. Cross

Geoffrey Keen

~ as ~

Gen. Nye

Moultrie Kelsall

~ as ~

The Father

Cyril Cusack

~ as ~

Taxi Driver

André Morell

~ as ~

Sir Bernard Spilsbury

View full cast & crew

Reviews (1)

CinemaSerf
Written 10 month(s) ago
7
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. Africa and so as to encourage them to divide their forces. A solid British cast of Robert Flemyng, Geoffrey Keen and Laurence Naismith provide the military backbone to the story and Gloria Grahame plays along well when the Nazi's send a slightly oddly cast Stephen Boyd along as an Irishman charged with investigating whether or not the officer and his documents are real. Ronald Neame presents us with a well directed, scripted and scored depiction of a remarkable tale of human ingenuity and the cast deliver a solid and, at times, quite suspenseful wartime drama.