Highly Overrated But Still Good

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Just watched oskar werner as German traitor, a couple days ago I watched tyrone power proletariat fall in love with slumming joan Fontaine, she of the upper class, father a doctor who could have gotten her a better post, but she wants to sign up with the masses. On double date she meets tyrone in the dark and then a daytime date and they fall in love. They go to an inn and stay chastely in adjacent rooms and then he talks in his sleep: war terrors. Tom Mitchell shows up trying to convince him to turn himself in. Joan senses his mental turmoil without knowing its cause. A conversation with a kind one armed priest convinces him to turn himself in. He calls joan. Lets meet before i turn myself in. But the mp's catch him first. But a kind officer allows him a few hours to go meet joan, but German aerial attack and his helping hand and a falling wall puts him in the hospital. Joan goes to father and doctor dad operates on tyrone's brain. Will he live? We can only pray. But he marries her in his hospital bed. This was propaganda to convince the working class to join in the war against the Germans despite the system being corrupt. Quite explicit in pushing this message. The title is one of the worst ever.

Tyrone Power and Joan Fontaine star in this movie about war, patriotism, and being true to one's beliefs. Joan's a upper-crust member of society who volunteered for the WAAFs. Tyrone, an enlisted man, meets Joan, for a blind date, kind of. But he appears to have a secret or something in his past that bothers him and it begins to bother Joan.What begins as a low-key drama becomes a suspense espionage film as he is running from the law. My thoughts are not all together as I write this, and I feel it deserves a better written review than I am doing. It becomes a very personal, spiritual film as he wrestles with his conscience and the morality of war. I recommend this for anyone who wants an intelligent and deeply felt movie not just about war, but about real people thrown into these situations, who only want to do the right thing but feel they are losing a part of themselves by what they think is compromising their beliefs.Now one of my favorite movies of the stars, "This Above All" is out on a Tyrone Power DVD collection, but should be shown by TCM, so that more people will be more familiar with this unknown gem.

Given that all the other reviews on this film are from people who live outside the UK i thought i would give a review from the UK.In my view this is the phoniest film about the war in 1940 that was ever perpetrated by Hollywood.Virtually everything about it was wrong.The characters always seem to be going to restaurants and travelling in cars as if there was no rationing.They go down to what is clearly supposed to be a restricted area on the coast without ID.They go to a pub where a Hollywood idea of cockney is spoken other than the "Mumerset" accent of Nigel Bruce. Now there were conscientious objectors but these were normally people with a conscience about taking part in war.James Mason is one example.However the ideas and views put forward by Powers character would not have been current in the later part of 1940.By that time this country was fighting on its own in a life and death struggle.Chamberlain had resigned and Churchill was now PM.There was an all party coalition government not a National Conservative government.Hitlers peace feelers had been rebuffed and with the blitz there was now no go back.So the anti war sentiments put forward in the film are totally unbelievable as is Powers character.This film may have been a big success in its day but now looks very dated.

Although the English born, Laurence Olivier, Richard Greene, or Robert Donat would have done the part of Clive Briggs great justice, there was nothing wrong with the performance Tyrone Power gave in This Above All. Power does not even attempt an English accent, yet his performance is every bit as good as Robert Taylor's in Waterloo Bridge. Eric Knight's novel was a big seller and the film is a serious examination as to why this is the people's war. In a curious way Power's views which do undergo a radical transformation are a mirror image of what Marlon Brando said in The Young Lions about class distinctions.And in the same year of This Above All, Teresa Wright in Mrs. Miniver upheld the tradition of the upper classes. One of my favorite scenes from that film is Wright telling Richard Ney about the things she's involved in to make her corner of the world better. Joan Fontaine feels the same way, before she meets the cynical Power she tells her family that she feels she has to get in and do her bit. She joins the Women's Auxiliary Army Force as an enlistee, not even an officer. She feels as did Wright that class also carries responsibility.Power and Fontaine are a perfectly matched pair, she just coming off her Oscar and him at the height of his box office draw. Hollywood's English colony fills out the rest of the cast with the exception of Thomas Mitchell who is inevitably Irish.This Above All won an Oscar for Best Art Direction and it was nominated in several other categories. The film holds up remarkably well because it is both patriotic, but a very atypical and cynical film for its time, not your normal flag-waver.