Leofwine_draca A solidly engaging WW2 thriller from the Powell/Pressburger team. This one's a straightforward story about a bomber crew who go on a bombing raid over Stuttgart but who are forced to parachute out of their plane when it's hit by anti-aircraft fire. They land in Nazi-occupied Holland and are forced to put themselves at the mercy of local resistance members in order to escape.A premise like this is ripe for suspense and ONE OF OUR AIRCRAFT IS MISSING doesn't disappoint in this respect. The story has a ring of authenticity to it and is enlivened by the stalwart efforts of the cast members who include Eric Portman, Bernard Miles, and Hugh Burden among their number. I thought that the special effects for the era - let us not forget this was made while the war was still going on - were very good. The bits in Holland tone it down a notch but the story picks back up towards the climax, leading to a thrilling ending. There's very little to dislike here.

Robert J. Maxwell It's pretty good, and it ought to be. Powell and Pressburger produced, wrote and directed it. It was shot by Ronald Neame and edited by David Lean. And the cast includes some well-known faces -- Pamela Brown, Godfrey Tearle, Bernard Miles -- as well as some, uncredited, who were to become familiar over the next few years -- James Donald, Gordon Jackson, Peter Ustinov.The script is literate, though it includes some incidents that are now staples, and the flight of the Wellington into Germany and its being damaged on the return over Holland are eminently realistic and filled with tension, given the period.It strikes a viewer as especially well thought out. The behavior and conversation of the men huddled in the bomber are believable. None of the boyish exuberance of, say, Howard Hawks' "Air Force." Nobody shouts, "That'll teach the Nazi miscreants" or anything like that. It's all business, made a little less heavy by some light humor.When the half dozen men land in Holland and are discovered by the locals, they aren't kissed by the girls, they don't have roses thrown at them, and nobody gives them bottles of wine. The Dutch have been living with the Nazi occupation for years and they know better than that. Pamela Brown, as a leader of the interrogation team, takes her time in making sure that she's not dealing with German ringers before she organizes help.Some of the incidents may be real but are a little hard to believe. The men are to be taken, disguised as farmers, to the Catholic church for safety's sake and two of them balk because they are Methodist and Baptist. Huh? Seriously. It's somewhat surprising to find a Catholic church in a Duth village to begin with, and even more queer to find the congregation singing hymns. But, okay.That's nothing compared to the film's many virtues, which include an exciting rescue at sea from a wobbling buoy.See it. Audrey Hepburn was a teenager who saw it up close because she lived through it. Anything Audrey Hepburn (nee van Heemstra) did as a teen-aged girl is all right with me.

icemith Given that this movie was made about the then contemporary World War II times, without the benefit of a huge budget (compared to now), generations before computer graphics became the norm, it is refreshing to see a sensible depiction of those wartime conditions. Imagine making a picture of the bombing raids over Germany in the (I presume Mosquito) bombers, not known to be that secure from ground based A.A.C. fire— they could not fly higher, as could the later Lancasters. I feel the directors chose correctly in making it a character driven piece, with the action sublimated somewhat. I caught this movie on a relatively new local TV station, it was one of their first offerings albeit in the early morning, I did not know about the movie before. What also surprised me was the appearance of later 'stars', Robert Helpmann, Peter Ustinov and Googie Withers, though she was fairly established by then. By co-incidence, I had viewed earlier that evening a British Documentary feature where the grandchildren of the original RAF bomber crew-members were to learn to actually fly a remaining WW II aircraft. And that reference was cool. The atmosphere exhibited in that doco, certainly the old time news clips, recent interviews of the veterans, rang true to the movie, especially with the actual ( or the perceived depiction if it was only that ) film of the raids over Germany and the resultant destruction.The characterisations were laid back, as befits the RAF types, and the Dutch citizens, who organised the Resistance, were well played. Besides the unexpected cast members, there was another piece of 'recoginition' I found fascinating, and I hope it wasn't used in the film, (made in either 1941 or 1942, both are given in various sources), and gave away the Resistance as the war was only half over then. Of course the film makers had no idea how long the war would last or just what was in store for them. The pace of the film was a bit pedestrian, all the better I think, to enable the characters to be developed, and the bits of business the group had to 'endure' was fairly realistic, reasonably true to life. I guess there must have been some propaganda value in the movie as I couldn't imagine that opportunity would have been missed by the British authorities, maybe even instigated it, in league with the Dutch. I could hardly blame them.All in all, I thought it was a fascinating movie, a benchmark. For others to come it also was a benchmark, to be creditable one had to do at least as well. Whether our later techniques make it easier, or convenient, or cost effective, or entertaining, or thought provoking, is a matter for our future, but looking back sixty odd years I think they produced a fine movie.

robertguttman One of the best war films produced World War II, `One of Our Aircraft is Missing' is the product of one of the best British filmmaking teams of the 1940s, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. The makers of such unusual and memorable films as `The Red Shoes' and `Black Narcissus', Powel and Pressburger's films were never like anyone else's. Their approach to a wartime propaganda film was equally different.`One of Our Aircraft is Missing' begins dramatically with the crash of an RAF Vickers Wellington bomber designated `B-For Bertie', and then flashes back to the events leading thereto. The viewer is introduced to the six members of crew, and learns that they had actually bailed out of their crippled aircraft prior to the crash, landing in Nazi-occupied Holland. The remainder of the story describes their escape back to Britain.What makes this film different from the conventional Hollywood treatment of similar subject matter is that `One of Our Aircraft is Missing' stresses the courage and resourcefulness of the Dutch civilians rather than the aircrew. Indeed, it made manifestly clear that the British crew could never have escaped without the assistance of a great many ordinary Dutch people of all ages and both sexes. The characters, both British and Dutch, are all well drawn Surprisingly enough, even the Germans are depicted as not entirely inhuman. `They want to be liked', says one Dutch patriot who has wormed her way into their confidence by posing as a Quisling.From a historical perspective, this film is of interest due to its depiction of RAF Bomber Command operations during the early part of World War II, as well as details of the interior of the famous Wellington Bomber. It is also worth seeing as early example of the work of legendary film director David Lean (`Oliver Twist', `Bridge Over the River Kwai', `Lawrence of Arabia', Doctor Zhivago', Ryan's Daughter', etc), who served as Film Editor. There is also an early performance by a very young (and thin) Peter Ustinov, who acts in Dutch and Latin as well as English. All in all, this film is well worth a look.