urbanh20

Plodding along with a strange set of characters in a bombed out London hotel in the aftermath of WWII. Lots of points to have made this interesting but far too many unsatisfactory elements in the story. A far-too-silent German child who seems oblivious to everything that has/is going on around her. There are so many lingering close-up shots of her that there were times when it seemed that there should be more story about her, if only more about the trauma of being grabbed and dragged from her home in the middle of the night and ‘exported’ to London. But there are incongruities in the story that really bugged me while watching. The leading man - British Army Captain Ferguson - every time he comes on screen I want to shout “get a shave and a haircut” - I know it’s drama but, come on! If the leading man’s best friend can sports vaguely 1940s moustache, surely the leading man would appear clean shaven, at least when reporting to his commanding officer. The MI19 characters were equally annoying - Poliakoff must have modelled them on every cinematic Gestapo/KGB villain - just bad! As in poorly depicted not evil. Then there’s the question of rationing - lots of references to “we saved all our coupons” but everything is very lavish (apart from the grey mess of melted ice cream that seems to be served up so frequently - people! They knew how to make (and keep) ice cream in post-WWII London! And then there’s the jet engine - designed and built in a couple of weeks apparently. And the last anomalous shot of the newspaper dated August 30,1947 claiming that the Americans had broken the sound barrier - erm, excuse me! But the flight in question was October 14th and was secret! It wasn’t declassified until the summer of 1948 so no way was it reported in London newspapers in 1947. It’s fine to mess around and fictionalise characters but not major events. You might as well say VE Day was in April 1944.