Thankfully Olivier didn't get the part that Roger Livesey makes his own, and it is also Anton Walbrook's finest hour. Innovative film features Deborah Kerr as three different women, and trumps Brief Encounter with its trick of beginning at the end. Pressburger's favourite, and you can see why - the scene in which (in one slowly closing take) Theo explains his reasons for wanting to return to England is about as autobiographical as you can get. A key scene in an extraordinary work.
Their longest film (2 hours 40) is also perhaps the most serious, examining the nature of friendship and war and why it is no longer conducted by gentlemen. Georges Perinal's photography still looks superb and future stars Jack Cardiff and Geoffrey Unsworth are assisting.
But also very, very funny, viz. reunion of soldiers 'Sugar' Candy and 'Hoppy'.
Hoppy: I was awfully sorry to hear about your leg. Jumping Jehosaphat! They're both there!
'Sugar' Candy: What the hell did you think I was standing on?
Hoppy: They told me in Bloemfontein that they cut off your left leg.
Candy: Can't have, old boy. I'd have known about it.
Ronald Culver has arguably the best line ("Three. What's it got to do with the War Office? Four. I'll tell you.") but there is plenty of dialogue as witty, such as this throwaway and quintessentially British line, written by a Hungarian: "Warm for January". "Damn cold I call it." Or "You're a good pupil Edith. That's £32,000 I owe you."
In a film full of amazing moments the scene in which we build up slowly to a duel, then pull away from it, is perhaps the most remarkable. Did Billy Wilder see and love this? Of course he did, as Pressburger and he knew each other from Berlin at UFA at the time of Emil and the Detectives.
Last word to Time Out's Chris Peachment "It is marked by an enormous generosity of spirit: in the history of the British cinema there is nothing to touch it."
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