Gran Turismo (2023)

Aka Gran Turismo: A True Story. There’s no future in racing. Following a pitch by marketing executive Danny Moore (Orlando Bloom), Nismo, the motorsport division of Japanese car manufacturer Nissan establishes the GT (Gran Turismo) Academy to recruit skilled players of the racing simulator Gran Turismo and turn them into real racing drivers. Danny recruits former driver-turned-mechanic Jack Salter (David Harbour) to train the players. Jack is initially hesitant but accepts after tiring of the arrogance of his team’s driver, Nicholas Capa (Josha Stradowski ). Meanwhile in Cardiff, Wales, teenager Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe) a university dropout, clothes shop employee and gamer is an avid player of the racing simulator and wants to become a racing driver despite the disapproval of his former footballer father Steve (Djimon Hounsou). His mother Lesley (Geri Haliwell Horner) suggests he return to college to study engineering and get into the racing business that way. Jann discovers he is eligible for a qualification race to join the GT Academy after setting a time record for a particular track. The night before his race, Jann is invited by his brother Coby (Daniel Puig) to a party and they take their father’s care. Jann flirts with a young woman named Audrey (Maeve Courtier-Lilley) whom he fancies. The gathering breaks up when police arrive and Jann initiates a pursuit after driving away when their friends are pulled over. The brothers escape but are caught returning by their father. Jann offers to take the blame for Coby if he admits that he is the better driver. Jann is brought to his father’s place of employment the following day in an attempt to be taught a life lesson but leaves early to partake in the qualifying race, which he wins, earning a place in GT Academy. At the academy camp, Jack puts the competitors through their paces in various tests, through which ten competitors are narrowed down to five. During one of the tests, Jann crashes with Jack in the car and claims that the brakes were glazed. This is later proven correct by analysts, to Jack’s surprise. The remaining five compete in a final race to determine who will represent Nissan. Jann narrowly wins the race against American competitor Matty Davis (Darren Barnet) but Danny insists Matty should be chosen as the representative due to his better commercial viability but Jann is selected at Jack’s insistence. Jann is told that if he finishes at least fourth in any one of a series of qualifying races, he will earn a professional licence and contract with Nissan. He finishes last in his first professional race at the Red Bull Ring in Austria after Nicholas taps him into a spin. Despite gradually improving over the next few races, he does not finish the penultimate race in Spain. He travels to Dubai for his last qualifying race during which Nicholas takes a corner too fast and crashes. Despite the debris from this crash cracking his windshield, Jann achieves a fourth-place finish and earns his FIA licence. He then travels to Tokyo with Danny and Jack to sign his contract and uses his signing bonus to fly Audrey to Tokyo as they start a relationship. Jann’s first race after signing is at the Nurburgring. He starts the race well and maintains a high position until the front of his car lifts into the air at the Flugplatz corner, hitting a barrier and launching into a crowded spectator area. Jann is airlifted to the Nürburgring Medical Center and is informed while in hospital that a spectator was killed in the crash, to his horror. When Jann is reluctant to return to racing and blames himself for the spectator’s death, Jack returns him to the Nürburgring. He reveals that he was involved in a fatal accident at the 24 Hours of Le Mans which led to a fellow driver dying and subsequently Jack’s retirement from driving. An inquiry clears Jann of any wrongdoing but professional sentiment turns against sim drivers. In response, Danny decides that a sim driver team needs to compete at Le Mans and finish on the podium to prove their viability. Danny enlists Matty and fellow GT Academy participant Antonio Cruz (Pepe Barroso) to make up the three-driver team alongside Jann … It’s like he suddenly remembered he was a racing driver. For petrolheads and gamers alike, this alternative sports biopic based on a true story written by Jason Hall and Zach Baylin has a lot to offer – a dream job for a kid whose life is dedicated to a simulation of it in the video game created by Kazanori Yamauchi, played here by Takehiro Hira. After a half hour setup, in which our hero is supposedly the offspring of the world’s least likely couple, he comes into the purview of a nasty looking man who’s hiding his own hurt under a cloak of viciousness. You’ve got instincts that can’t be taught. As the narrative demands, the key relationship here is of course with mentor Salter, the tough but decent father figure that Jann lacks at home and who of course is concealing the tragedy that led to his own retirement (perhaps the internet didn’t work a decade ago so Jann has to wait until the 70th minute for Salter to tell him). A wonderful running joke is Jann’s need to listen to MOR music to keep his nerves in check – while he has Enya and Kenny G in his ears, Salter is playing Black Sabbath on an old school Walkman: that leads to a change in song choice at the crucial moment on the race track. The other strand is the idea that learning how to drive on a simulator video game is not a bad thing (what else …) even if there are no real bumps on this road that can’t be straightened out. Anyone looking for a deep and meaningful discussion of the existential or actual gap between reality and simulation may look elsewhere – or find that this constitutes proof that there is no difference whatsoever. Of course this is all predicated on the fairy tale model, nowadays that means transposing things from self-imposed lockdown life to doing things for real and so it is – oh joy! – that Jann finally races at Le Mans, the ultimate proof of racing prowess. A colourful, splashy tale with so much great coverage by cinematographer Jacques Jouffret blended with game visuals that even a conservative storyline and the questionable use of a real-life tragedy can’t help but entertain once this gets wheels under it. The real Mardenborough performs as his avatar’s stunt double, fact fans. Directed by Neill Blomkamp. Somewhere out in the world there’s a kid who’s faster than all these arseholes

What Have I Done to Deserve This? (1984)

Aka ¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto! At first it was fun, but I am too young to be tied down. A Spanish cleaning lady with a chaotic life and a pill addiction, Gloria (Carmen Maura) lives in a Madrid apartment with her cranky husband, Antonio (Angel de Andres-Lopez) ; their two trouble-prone sons, gay Miguel (Miguel Angel Herranz) and drug dealer Toni (Juan Martinez); and Gloria’s ruthless lunatic mother-in-law Abuela (Chus Lampreave) who is addicted to both bottled water and fairy cakes. With little emotional support, apart from call girl neighbour Cristal (Veronica Forque) who likes Gloria to keep her company during bonking sessions, Gloria finds herself at wit’s end and finds out that Antonio has a secret passion on the decadent German singer Ingrid Muller (Katia Moritz) for whom he had worked as driver in Germany. Writer Lucas Villalba (Gonzal Suarez) who’s doing the memoirs of a random dictator tries to convince Antonio to forge letters from Hitler and travels to Germany to meet the singer to invite her to participate in the scheme. She’s in the middle of a suicide attempt and he persuades there’s money in the scheme. Gloria is pushed over the edge when an argument with her husband leads her to hitting him over the head with a hambone causing his accidental death. As Gloria deals with the morbid matter, other eccentric characters including an evil ginger child, a lizard called Dinero and a gay paedophile dentist who Gloria allows adopt Miguel, enter the picture, only adding to the craziness and police inspector Polo (Luis Hostalot) starts to investigate Antonio’s death … Tonight’s client would like a whip. If I don’t take him one, he might leave. One of the unexpected eruptions of the Eighties was rebirth of the Spanish cinema, almost entirely courtesy of writer/director Pedro Almodóvar’s crazy comedies and Gloria is one of his great creations, a female hero like no other.  Women today just won’t stay home! The collaboration of actress and director was such a balm to a country on the verge following Franco’s reign and their crazy vehicles somehow contained the truth of female experience as well as knowing high comedy: love, servitude, lies, housework, melodrama, marriage, motherhood, money, murder (out of Roald Dahl), sex, drugs, prostitution and perversion, the whole gamut. What I wanted was some commonplace scene of elegant, sophisticated sadism, like in French films. This mad farce with its charismatic protagonist and nutty plot is one of the most purely enjoyable and fun satires ever made, a work of seemingly joyous abandon. Maura is never less than magnificent: she is the performer who Almodóvar once said is the actress who has best absorbed and communicated my idea of the female. Maura has said of him, What I liked about his characters was that they were full of vitality, positive, practical, surreal – at least the ones he gave me. They’re characters where the woman is in charge. Such sheerly witty feminism – has it ever been bettered? Tell me who are the romantics and who are the realists?

Kings of the Road (1976)

Aka Im Lauf der Zeit (In the Course of Time). How do you live? While travelling his route along the rural border between East and West Germany, solitary film projector repairman Bruno Winter (Rüdiger Vogler) meets depressive paediatrician and linguist Robert Lander (Hanns Zischler) when the latter attempts suicide by driving his car into a shallow lake following the breakup of his marriage. The two form a genuine friendship as Robert accompanies Bruno on the road to fix equipment in deserted and dilapidated cinemas. They discuss the decline of German film, the hegemony of America culture and their challenging relationships with women. Robert stops at his home where he discusses his unhappiness about his mother’s death eight years earlier with his printer father (Rudolf Schundler) whom he believes disrespected her. Bruno and Robert then encounter a third man (Marquard Bohm) whose wife drove their car into a tree the night before. They stay with him until the repair service turns up. Bruno decides to break off from his work to go to his childhood home on the Rhine and he and Robert take a motorbike with sidecar and a boat to get there but Bruno cannot bring himself to spend the night in the house. They return to the border where they ultimately part ways, with Bruno from his truck watching Robert on a train as their paths cross on the railway line. Then Bruno talks to a woman (Franziska Stoemmer) whose father refuses to screen new films at his cinema because he believes modern work exploits people … For the first time I see myself as someone who’s something in a certain time and that time is my history. Perhaps the quintessential Wim Wenders film, this road movie is an inky black and white portrait of the psychological state of Germany thirty years after the war, which has never really ended in its impact – empty roads, filled with signifiers of a depressed and separated nation and a people whose heads are singing along to American songs while contemplating suicide. The film ends at a border sign. For Wenders this is both an American-style film filled with air and space and music and occasional political references (including a funfair’s cigarette lighter made from a cast of Hitler’s head); and a conversation about the boundaries between geography and cinema, a dialogue about the colonising of the German consciousness, which he allows a character to state explicitly. This reflexive iteration gives the form a new European stamp, bringing it all back home, accidentally on purpose, colonising the ultimate American film form. In the end, film yields to the reality of geopolitics with American-ness a permanent inhabitant even if the troops are mostly dispersed and the Soviets are entrenched, at least for the time being. They are out of sight except as newspaper headlines. Hearts and minds:  the perverse antithesis to tourism as the uninvited guest lingers in ways that cannot be explained, only imagined. There are things that might shock, such as when Vogler defecates in the open air (an image that once seen is never forgotten) and the general sense of masculine despair. The third of Wenders’ road trilogy. Shot by Robby Muller with music by Axel Linstaedt. The Yanks have colonised our subconscious

Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

Wilfrid the Fox! That’s what they call him, and that’s what he is! When Leonard Vole (Tyrone Power) approaches ailing veteran London barrister Sir Wilfrid Roberts (Charles Laughton) to defend him on a charge of murdering a wealthy widow who was enamored of him, going so far as to make him the main beneficiary of her will. Strong circumstantial evidence all points to Vole as the killer. Sir Wilfrid’s nurse Miss Plimsoll (Elsa Lanchester) objects on the grounds of her client’s ill health. Vole’s former wife Christine Helm (Marlene Dietrich) a German refugee provides an alibi for him. But then she turns up in court to testify against him and Sir Wilfrid is contacted by a mysterious woman, who (for a fee) provides him with letters written by Christine to a mysterious lover named Max  …  I am constantly surprised that women’s hats do not provoke more murders. Adapted from Agatha Christie’s 1953 stage play (based on her 1925 short story) by Larry Marcus with the screenplay by Harry Kurnitz (who had written whodunnits pseudonymously) and director Billy Wilder, who chose this project because he so admired its construction. Essentially, this is his Hitchcock film, a brilliantly made comic suspenser with rat-a-tat dialogue to die for and what an ending! And what stars! In a film which hugely improved on Christie’s characterisation, Dietrich smothers the screen with charisma in both her (dis)guises while Power is superb as the smooth charmer he made his own. Lanchester is gifted as many good lines as anyone in the cast including,  Personally, I think the government should do something about those foreign wives. Like an embargo. How else can we take care of our own surplus. Don’t you agree Sir Wilfrid? Her real-life husband of course plays the wily lawyer and he is magnificent: his expressions and business are masterful. There are some welcome familiar faces – John Williams (a Hitchcock regular), Henry Daniell and Una O’Connor, the only original member of the Broadway cast to reprise her role. Beautifully staged and paced, shot by Russell Harlan on sets by Alexandre Trauner with Dietrich costumed by Edith Head, this breathtaking entertainment is a classic film, an object lesson in adaptation with wit and ingenuity to spare. Both Dietrich and Power sing I May Never Go Home Anymore (uncredited) and this is his last completed film. But this is England, where I thought you never arrest, let alone convict, people for crimes they have not committed

The Divided Heart (1954)

When is the war going to end? After WW2, three year old Yugoslav child Ivan (Martin Keller) is found wandering around alone in Germany and then adopted from an orphanage by a German couple, soldier Franz (Armin Dahlen) and his wife Inga (Cornell Borchers). When Ivan (now called Toni) (Michel Ray) turns 10, he hears his mother Sonja (Yvonne Mitchell) is alive after surviving Auschwitz concentration camp and she commences a legal battle in Germany to regain custody with a sympathetic Chief Justice (Alexander Knox) arguing against his peers (Liam Redmond and Eddie Byrne) as to her rights and the child’s wishes… You think only blood mothers can have mother love. There’s a plaintive quality to this drama, made within a decade of a war that at that point still had visceral effects in daily issues. All the acting is superior but Mitchell is tremendous as the woman who has lost everything bar the son so cruelly taken from her. And he is a child terrorised by the sight of Germans in uniform – that subplot is very well dramatised in his reaction to the appearance of his adoptive father following barely realised memories of what happened to his real family:  his father was a Slovenian partisan executed by Nazis and his sisters were murdered by them. Based on a real-life case, this isn’t just realistic, it’s true in the best sense, filled with conflicting emotions and confused loyalties. Ray is astonishing as the child torn between the adoptive parents he loves and the mother he has forgotten. He would also appear in The Brave One, The Tin Star and Lawrence of Arabia but perhaps his most memorable role would be in cult fave The Space Children. He later became an investment banker and a champion skier, a renaissance man in every sense. Beautifully shot by Otto Heller with an exquisite dramatic score by Georges Auric. Written by Jack Whittingham and Richard Hughes, this is very effectively directed by Charles Crichton. Look out for future director John Schlesinger as the ticket collector on the train in the last scene. This is life. This is what we’re born for

The Good Liar (2019)

What I deplore more than anything is deception. Career con artist Roy Courtnay (Ian McKellen) can hardly believe his luck when he meets wealthy recently widowed Betty McLeish (Helen Mirren) online. As Betty opens her life and bland suburban home to him, Roy is surprised to find himself caring about her, turning what should be a straightforward swindle into the most treacherous tightrope walk of his life. Her PhD student grandson Stephen (Russell Tovey) makes it clear he suspects Roy is out for financial gain and turns up at various encounters. When Roy is away from Betty he’s in London organising a long con from investors using Russian decoys with co-conspirator Vincent Halloran (Jim Broadbent). One of the victims follows Roy in the street one day and after he is dispatched under a Tube train Roy decides to take Betty on holiday to Berlin where a surprise awaits … It’s like being smothered in beige. Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation of Nicholas Searle’s novel goes in different directions and manages to constantly surprise while being faithful to the traits established in the first scenes. McKellen and Mirren effortlessly plumb the characterisation, coming up trumps as the narrative brings us back to a very different world where the stakes where initially raised. The story’s roots in 1940s Germany are jaw-dropping when revealed – this is far from being a conventional story of a duped geriatric in some pensions scam:  we are tipped off when McKellen drops his act early on and meets his fellow crims at Stringfellows’ strip club and we meet the guys who want to join in the quick profit as investors (nice to recognise Mark Lewis Jones and Lucian Msamati from the astonishingly violent summer TV hit Gangs of London). Now that’s not a typical octagenarian move. We have to look after what we’ve worked to secure. The long con twists wonderfully in Mirren’s favour in Berlin when another identity is uncovered and the suspense ratchets up several notches as an obscenity from the past is resurrected. The stylish and pacy direction of this wonderfully tangled web is by Bill Condon, who previously worked with McKellen two decades ago on the cherishable Gods and Monsters. Do you know who you are?

Private’s Progress (1956)

The enemy does not play cricket. He abides by no rules. In 1942 university student Stanley Windrush (Ian Carmichael) is conscripted into the British Army where his uncle Brigadier Bertram Tracepurcel (Dennis Price), himself more interested in art than army, believes he will easily graduate to officer class. Instead upon landing at Gravestone Barracks in Kent for basic training alongside Egan (Peter Jones) a far more apt pupil, he is hopeless, failing officer selection and winding up at a holding unit commanded by Major Hitchcock (Terry-Thomas) where he meets up with several miscreants. They include workshy wide boy Cox (Richard Attenborough) who skives off work regularly and Blake (Victor Maddern) who runs away regularly and is caught in Scotland trying to join the Navy. Windrush is sent to train as a Japanese interpreter and is assigned to his uncle’s raid behind German lines by mistake but the Brigadier just tells him to keep his mouth shut, We don’t want any of that Where Is The Pen of Me Aunt stuff. The real purpose of retrieving art treasures is to sell them to crooked dealers. When Windrush is left behind following an unfortunate episode with a German General he is captured by the British and has a hard time persuading them he’s one of them with all his Nazi regalia and ID card … The producers gratefully acknowledge the official cooperation of absolutely nobody. Adapted by John Boulting and Frank Harvey from Alan Hackney’s autobiographical novel, this service comedy from the Boulting Brothers is equal parts farce and satire with the usual winsome act from Carmichael as the utterly unsuitable university prof shoved into the Army during WW2. Very funny without being outrageous, there are some great exchanges and the antics in Germany (which feature Christopher Lee as a Nazi!) are extremely funny indeed. And yes, Terry-Thomas says many, many times, You’re an absolute shower! The topper is worth waiting for. The delightful score is by John Addison. Being educated sort of limits you, doesn’t it

Octopussy (1983)

Englishman. Likes eggs, preferably Fabergé. Likes dice, preferably fully loaded. British MI6 agent 009 drops off a fake Fabergé jewelled egg at the British embassy in East Berlin and is later killed at Octopussy’s travelling circus. Suspicions mount when the assistant manager of the circus who happens to be exiled Afghan prince Kamal Khan (Louis Jourdan), outbids 007 James Bond (Roger Moore) for the real Fabergé piece at Sotheby’s. Bond follows Kamal to India where Bond thwarts several ingenious attacks, kidnapping by Kamal and encounters Kamal’s ally, the anti-heroine of the title (Maud Adams), an international smuggler who runs the circus as a cover for her illegal operations. It seems that Orlov (Steven Berkoff), a decidedly rank and belligerent Russian general is planning to raise enough money with the fake Fabergés to detonate a nuclear bomb in Europe and then defeat NATO forces once and for all in conventional warfare… The West is decadent and divided. The thirteenth in the series and Moore’s seventh appearance as the sexy superspy as well as the first to feature Robert Brown as M following Bernard Lee’s recent death, this is derived from a number of Ian Fleming’s stories: the title is from his 1966 short story collection and there is a scene inspired by another story, The Property of a Lady (included in 1967 and later editions of Octopussy and The Living Daylights), as well as one brief bit of characterisation lifted from Moonraker; while the events of the titular story Octopussy form a part of the title character’s background which she relates herself; but the bulk of the narrative is original, the screenplay credited to novelist George MacDonald Fraser who suggested that it be set in India, series regular Richard Maibaum & producer Michael G. Wilson. In fact Moore had intended retiring from the role but was deemed the most profitable actor for the part when the rival production Never Say Never Again with former Bond Sean Connery was up and running at the same time: James Brolin was apparently due to take over from Moore – can you imagine! The perception of this as the weakest of Moore’s particular Bond films doesn’t hold up despite its apparently problematic heroine (her MO is a bit slight) but Bond’s seduction of a woman who is his equal is particularly well observed –  in fact they both have a death to avenge. The narrative is especially prescient – to have a nuclear bomb planned for Germany, at the time the centre of Cold War fears (see the TV show Deutschland 83 for a dramatic interpretation of the time), feels utterly relevant and Moore is given great space for both humour and action, pitched at a perfect balance here and decidedly lacking in camp. It’s probably the best written of all his Bond iterations. The chases (and there are quite a few) are brilliantly mounted, including trains, planes automobiles and elephants and there’s a great homage to The Most Dangerous Game when our man is the jungle prey. The climactic aerial stunts are some of the most astonishing you’ll ever see – utterly thrilling. Legendary tennis player Vijay Amritraj has a great supporting role as Bond’s MI6 ally in India and even Q (Desmond Llewelyn) gets in on the action with a fabulous hot air balloon! Jourdan makes for a suitably insidious villain and Berkoff (almost!) has a blast as the nutty military man who makes the KGB’s Gogol (Walter Gotell) look sane. There is a terrific performance by Kristina Wayborn as Kamal’s stunning henchwoman Magda – her exit from a night with Bond has to be seen! Adams had of course appeared opposite Moore in previous Bond outing The Man With the Golden Gun as Scaramanga’s doomed mistress and she gets to flex more muscles here albeit her entrance is not until the film’s second half. Watch out for former Pan’s People dancer Cherry Gillespie as Midge, one of Octopussy’s bodyguards.  It’s wonderfully paced, with each sequence superseding the action of the previous one and the flavourful locations are beautifully captured by Alan Hume’s cinematography: this has undergone a pristine restoration. Among the very best Bonds, an episode whose influence can clearly be seen in both the Indiana Jones and Mission: Impossible franchises.  The theme song, All Time High is written by John Barry and Tim Rice and performed by Rita Coolidge. Directed by John Glen, the second of his five outings at the helm. Perfect escapism. Mr Bond is indeed a very rare breed, soon to be made extinct

 

Above Suspicion (1943)

Her conception of foreign affairs derives directly from Hollywood. In 1939 just prior to WW2 honeymooning couple Oxford professor Richard Myles (Fred MacMurray) and his new bride, undergraduate Frances (Joan Crawford) are recruited to spy on the Nazis for British intelligence. Initially finding the mission fun the trail gets them in real danger as they try to interpret their encounters with contacts.  They then realise a fellow guest Peter Galt (Richard Ainley) at their holiday destination is actually a hitman on a mission of his own and his girlfriend has been murdered at Dachau after the Brits let them take on a job without informing them how bad the Nazis really were … Here we have an iron maiden, also known as the German Statue of Liberty. Crawford may have railed at the preposterous plot in TV’s Feud:  Bette and Joan and it would be her last film at MGM but the fact is Helen MacInnes based her excellent wartime novel on something that actually happened to herself and her husband. Crawford has several good moments – and a ‘bit’ involving what happens her ankle when she’s nervous – including when Conrad Veidt inveigles his way into their museum visit and shows her an instrument of torture which she describes as a totalitarian manicure. It’s a preview of coming attractions. She and MacMurray have chemistry and there are terrifically tense musical moments with some remarks that just skid past innuendo regarding their honeymoon. Fact is, they’ve been dumped in a really dangerous situation and now don’t they know it and the mention of concentration camps proves beyond reasonable doubt the Allies had a pretty good idea what was going on despite post-war claims. There’s an assassination that will only surprise someone who’s never watched a film. A sprightly script by Keith Winter & Melville Baker and Patricia Coleman (with uncredited work by Leonard Lee) keeps things moving quickly in Hollywood’s version of Europe, circa, whenever, and who can’t love a movie that reveals suave Basil Rathbone in Nazi regalia? Directed by Richard Thorpe but it should have been Hitchcock, as Crawford herself stated. Typical tourists – above suspicion

Appointment in Berlin (1943)

That’s the whole point of Secret Service – to prevent people suspecting. In 1938 disillusioned and recently disgraced RAF officer Wing Commander Keith Wilson (George Sanders) risks his life in Berlin by broadcasting pro-Nazi propaganda as a cover for counter-espionage. His broadcasts have a military code enabling British manoeuvres. He falls in love with Ilse (Marguerite Chapman) sister of a high-ranking Nazi Rudolph von Preising (Onslow Stevens) and forges links with journalist Greta van Leyden (Gale Sondergaard) who is actually a spy as well and when a message needs to be taken to Holland he’s the only one left standing … If you are going in at the deep end you may as well do it for England. In a rare tragic role, Sanders scores as the officer whose disgust at Britain’s politically neutral stance prior to WW2 leads him to become a pariah – lending him handy cover when England expects. The question of identity hovers over every scene here as Ilse’s transformation is nicely nuanced whereas Sondergaard’s situation is more extreme and her ending is well staged. There’s an amusing double act from a pair of American neutrals whose constant haranguing of supposedly treacherous Wilson adds humour to proceedings – inevitably they assist in his time of need. Nice references to Goebbels and his role in the manufacturing of truth. An interesting propaganda picture of pre-war problems and the reason why cross-border co-operation was required. Michael Hogan and Horace McCoy wrote the screenplay based on B.P. Fineman’s story.  Directed by Alfred E. Green. It’s finally happened