ONE OF OUR AIRCRAFT IS MISSING
(1942) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Godfrey Tearle, Eric Portman, Hugh Williams,
Bernard Miles, Hugh Burden, Emrys Jones,
Googie Withers, Pamela Brown, Joyce Redman,
Hay Petrie, Robert Helpmann, Peter Ustinov
Six crewmen on an RAF bomber bail out over the Netherlands after an attack on Stuttgart. Courageous Dutch villagers hide them from the Nazis and help them escape. World War Two heroics done entirely without music, which you notice after a while by its absence. Two early scenes in the plane stand out: a fourth-wall-bashing bit in which the camera pans around and the flyers take turns introducing themselves, and the part moments later when they exchange stories about the girls they've met in Stuttgart, even as they're on their way to bomb them. The editor was David Lean. A young (and remarkably thin) Peter Ustinov appears briefly as a parish priest. One sign that this might be a Powell and Pressburger film: The plane, after the men have jumped, sputters back to life and continues to fly on its own.
