A Brilliant Conflict

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

There are two main themes to this movie: A war time mission carried out by French intelligence and a story of true love and lost love. The main character is a colonel. He is the one referred to in the text that scrolls over the opening shot of the Arc de Triomphe............ He is stated to be a cold and ruthless agent of the Deuxième Bureau.I like this movie but it isn't meant for everyone. It is really not an action movie, though it does have about 12 minutes of action towards the end. The longest continuous action sequence is about 4 minutes. I counted 65 explosions during this span. That doesn't happen until 67 minutes into the movie. When there is action it is very well done by 1968 standards anyway.In Enemy Country (IEC) has relatively short scenes. Movies after 1961 tended to have scenes that averaged from 1 to 3 minutes. IEC scenes average 1 minute 56 seconds, however, the first 21 scenes are shorter, averaging only 1 minute and 41 seconds. Its not just the shortness of the scenes but also the fact that almost every scene at the beginning is in a completely different physical location. This movie covers a lot of ground in the first 30 minutes. My feeling is it could have been better if the movie ran for around 140 minutes. Events at the beginning unfold rather fast, making it hard for the viewer to get their bearings. I imagine it was intended to give a sense of the chaos as must have been felt around 1939-40.Initially I had a hard time figuring out where some of the scenes were located. Like when the movie goes from 1939 to 1943, I thought the German Baron was still in France since Germany occupied France after 1940. It turns out he is in Germany somewhere near Kiel. I had to re-watch the beginning to catch this and a few other details. When Charles parachutes onto a beach, he is in Poland.Essentially everything that happens in the first half hour is to convince the Germans that Denise is a French traitor. Charles character doesn't blink an eye while he destroys (directly in some cases and indirectly in others) innocent peoples lives to carry this out.Since Anthony Franciosa's role as Charles requires him to be rather cold and all business, he doesn't get a chance to show much emotion in his part. If you watch closely, Charles is not as cold as his exterior shows. By using subtle pauses in lines and just a quick reflective look, you can see that sometimes he is internally questioning the cost this mission is taking on his soul. The majority of the movie is very serious, one of my favorite scenes is where Charles is playing a drunk to fool two German guards. This is the lightest scene in the movie. Other than that there really is no comic relief.There are a couple of really good lines from this movie. One is about not being able to love and appears very near the movies end. The other I will give below.:After Charles feels responsible for causing the death of General Marchois, he volunteers himself to do the dangerous mission rather than picking a subordinate. Charles superior, General Grieux exclaims,"Sometimes working out a sense of guilt is good for the soul." To which Charles replies," I don't have a soul, and neither do you."The take aways from the movie: Its hard to really tell how much good the Deuxième Bureau really did (in this movie anyway) There was a cost to convince the Germans that Denise was a traitor. There were unintended casualties and consequences. My thought is that the fast pace of the movie was by design of the director. It helps to show why Charles character is all business and never takes time for niceties. By the way the Deuxième Bureau didn't truly exist in 1943 as it was dissolved in 1940 with the armistice France made with Germany. However the term Deuxième Bureau was still used to refer to the remaining French intelligence.To sum up. This isn't a typical World War II movie. It doesn't cover any specific battle. The plot gets fairly involved so the viewer has to do a bit of work to get the enjoyment out of the movie. I find it to be a wonderful change of pace from WWII action flicks. Michael Constantine gave a great performance as Ladislov. Constantine would have been a perfect roboman in a Doctor Who series. There was nice friction between Anthony Franciosa's and Anjanette Comer's characters. Watch the faces of Charles and Denise at the end. It shows more of what was lost than any spoken words.

IN ENEMY COUNTRY is a fun American WW2 film which tells of espionage and derring-do behind enemy lines. The film features Tony Franciosa in the leading role which may be a detraction; he's quite bland here and outshone by the supporting players, which means that the film has something of a hollow at its centre. Still, the story is interesting enough to keep you watching, and I was never bored by the events taking place on screen.After the initial set-up, much of the story takes place in Occupied France and in a forced labour camp to boot. Thus the scenario is ripe for suspense. The narrative is about Allied attempts to steal a new torpedo prototype from the Nazis but it's more about the various spies trying not to get found out. Harry Keller's direction fails to wring the maximum suspense from his premise but the film remains engaging thanks to the set up. The action is limited but that which does occur is exciting.Guy Stockwell (brother of Dean) plays a contact with more wit and charm than the ill-at-ease Franciosa. Anjanette Comer proves extremely photogenic and it's impossible to take your eyes off her whenever she's around. John Karlen (DEATHDREAM) has a nice little role as a delivery driver while Patrick Knowles is a stuffy British general. Best of all is Michael Constantine, a real scene-stealer as the sadistic guard who has fun with a cattle prod.

This wasn't too bad a film if one likes "schoolboy stuff" and the settings looked very good. The cast was headed by the relatively unknown Anthony Franciosa, supported by a couple of middling names (Stockwell and Bell), with Hollywood veteran Patric Knowles (one of Errol Flynn's Merry Men in "Robin Hood") playing a senior officer. The plot creaked here and there, with the three agents never meeting up before their mission, which required them to go around the labour camp whistling a catchy tune and giving meaningful looks at those whom they thought might be their comrades.When they finally got together, they timed everything perfectly, for instance arriving very punctually to rendezvous with Denise at night-time in completely unfamiliar country. And, as has already been implied in Message Board, the aeroplane sent to pick up just three people was conveniently large to pick up a torpedo. With the Germans fast closing on the plane and with every second counting, the two lovers held up its departure by arguing whether Denise should stay behind or not – the sort of scene that gets me groaning aloud.I never did work out why Denise's husband ignored the three agents when he came across them – presumably he suspected what his wife was up to and loved her so much that he'd didn't want to implicate her? Nor am I sure who the "German" officer was who uncoupled the rear wagon on the train - perhaps a partisan who had somehow infiltrated the guards? The film was worth watching but not an epic.Perhaps it was cleverly aimed at an international audience, with two Americans and a British actor prominent, one of the former playing a Frenchman, and featuring Polish Resistance fighters.

In Enemy Country is an OK time filler about undercover agents trying to stop the Germans from developing a super torpedo during WWII. The action is a bit bland for much of the picture, but the final sequence is quite taut. Anthony Franciosca heads the cast and delivers a tolerable performance, but he lacks the range of expression to do anything really interesting with the role. Anyone who is interested in WWII will probably enjoy it, and anyone who likes impossible mission flicks set deep behind enemy lines will be well satisfied.