Ceticultsot
Beautiful, moving film.
Kodie Bird
True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.
Neive Bellamy
Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.
Brooklynn
There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.
Richard Chatten
The British wartime authorities' perennial obsession with fifth columnists ('enemy agents' were serving as baddies as early as the 1940 George Formby vehicle 'Let George Do It!') here finds elaborate expression in an ambitious production set in London during the Blitz. It took five credited writers to concoct this frequently hard to follow propaganda piece in which actual footage from the Blitz is adroitly combined with recreated studio footage. Censorship is benignly depicted as an essential part of the war effort (hence the title), while a pacifist organisation called 'People for Peace' is revealed to be not simply a Nazi front organisation run by British reactionaries but headed by authentic German 'sleepers' who privately converse among themselves in German. (With acts of terrorism in Europe by refugees from the Middle East now becoming almost everyday occurrences, the sequence depicting the arrival of a German agent masquerading as a Belgian refugee has disturbing contemporary resonances.)Richard Greene and Valerie Hobson are colourless leads, and dependable supporting actors like Basil Radford, Roland Culver and André Morell are generally given remarkably little to do; with the notable exception of Brefni O'Rorke as the editor of 'The Gazette', the newspaper the plot revolves around, who gets to deliver the film's stirring final speech at the fadeout.
Alex da Silva
Reporter Richard Greene (Randall) returns from Dunkirk and heads straight to his newspaper HQ to tell the story. He is motivated to get the truth to the public and cannot abide peace sympathisers such as the "People for Peace" movement who he wants to expose. However, this group seems to have an ulterior motive. Valerie Hobson (Carol) is a rookie reporter who joins him in his adventures.Well, it's all rather boring. The accents are quite difficult to understand – you have to adjust yourself to the rapid plumy diction. What on earth are they saying? The Scottish bloke speaks the most clearly! Once you get over this you wait for a plot but after about 50 minutes there still isn't anything going on. It's a film about reporters during WW2 but no strong lead story. What is this film about? Worse, we have to follow proceedings as led by the thoroughly dislikable Richard Greene. The rest of the cast also fall flat apart from Valerie Hobson. You spend a lot of this film waiting for something to happen and daydreaming about better things.
ksf-2
One of the films made by Two Cities Films in the 1940s and 1950s, this is a mostly, well-done story of newspaper reporters running into fifth-columnists within their midst in Britain during WW II. The editor of the paper and some other characters say some silly lines, but they can be overlooked. Richard Greene, Valerie Hobson, and Basil Radford star in this predictable spy thriller, showing the realities of bombed out London, although much of it is a background screen projection. The plot brings up the usual "Do we fight back or acquiesce?" wartime debate.Hobson had played Elizabeth in Bride of Frankenstein with the master B. Karloff in 1935. Greene was Sir Henry Baskerville opposite Basil Rathbone prior to "Unpublished...", and would later play Robin Hood in the British TV series for several years. Two Cities Films was part by the Rank Organization, which made films for many years. The Rank Organization would later be turned into a casino operator, which is still operating as a public company in England. Another interesting tidbit is Hobson's marriage to producer/writer Anthoney Havelock-Allen; she appears to have met and married him in 1939, and made nine films together. Sadly, they divorced in 1952, and she only made a couple more films after that...
JHC3
British war correspondent Bob Randall (Greene) personally witnesses the Allied defeat in France in May of 1940. After a harrowing experience, he is fortunate to be evacuated to England. He immediately resumes his position as a reporterfor a major London newspaper.While reporting daily news events, he discovers a society of pacifists, thePeople for Peace. Bob is incensed by this group, believing their activities are defeatist and are only advancing the Nazi cause. Unknown to the public, this group has been infiltrated by German agents who manipulate the society to sow despair among the British people.As the Germans bomb British cities, Bob makes it his personal mission to report on the activities of this group. He finds opposition among reporters who want free speech and British censors who, for security reasons, don't want the story published. Bob is eventually joined by another reporter, Carol Bennett(Hobson), who helps expose the enemy in their midst.This well made wartime film includes elements of quiet and very effectivehumor. This offsets the grim nature of war against the civilian population of London. Recommended.