Extra Helping of American Speed Talk
Confirm Or Deny, a newspaper film set in London during the Blitz, September 1940, has Don Ameche playing a brash, extroverted American foreign correspondent. After his news building gets bombed in a German raid, he sets up a news transmitting shop in a restaurant's basement, near the wine cellar. The place doubles for a while as an air raid shelter.
Working closely with Ameche is the gorgeous dark-haired Joan Bennett, playing an English teletype operator with the looks and manners of a movie star. They meet early on at night when he strikes a match to light his cigarette. She stops him, reminding him of the blackout. They spend the night next to each other, snuggled together after a fashion, in the Tube, surrounded by families, crying babies, luggage, the thumping of bombs going off.
As he sets up his alternate operation underneath the restaurant, he acquires the services of Joan Bennett, who goes along with him from a romantic standpoint, but balks when he wants to report on Operation Sea Lion, the planned German invasion of England, which of course never came to be. Even so, his reporting, acquired via carrier pigeon and the plucky boy (Roddy McDowall) waiting long hours on a rooftop for the news from French observers attaching notes to the birds' legs, upsets the status quo. British Intelligence doesn't want the Germans to know that they know about the invasion. Don Ameche speaks often of the ninety million readers of his paper, their right to know the truth, but in a climactic moment, Joan Bennett wrestles with Ameche, knocks over the teletype after writing nonsense from his dictation.
Meanwhile, an unexploded bomb occupies the subterranean room, half buried in the concrete floor. More bombing in the world above collapses the basement's roof, the couple are trapped, fighting each other over release of the story.
The film praises censorship. It also seems to be an urging towards getting American audiences into the idea of going to war. Released five days after the Pearl Harbor attack it must've been made months earlier, but would've seemed timely to Americans stirred up by the idea of being bombed by a wicked enemy.
Archie Mayo directed from a Samuel Fuller story. Fritz Lang also directed parts of the film, but is uncredited. I couldn't detect any specifically Lang-type moments, other than the presence of Joan Bennett, whom he directed in four subsequent and far superior movies. Maybe they met on the set of Confirm or Deny?
I can't confirm it.
Vic Neptune
Confirm Or Deny, a newspaper film set in London during the Blitz, September 1940, has Don Ameche playing a brash, extroverted American foreign correspondent. After his news building gets bombed in a German raid, he sets up a news transmitting shop in a restaurant's basement, near the wine cellar. The place doubles for a while as an air raid shelter.
Working closely with Ameche is the gorgeous dark-haired Joan Bennett, playing an English teletype operator with the looks and manners of a movie star. They meet early on at night when he strikes a match to light his cigarette. She stops him, reminding him of the blackout. They spend the night next to each other, snuggled together after a fashion, in the Tube, surrounded by families, crying babies, luggage, the thumping of bombs going off.
As he sets up his alternate operation underneath the restaurant, he acquires the services of Joan Bennett, who goes along with him from a romantic standpoint, but balks when he wants to report on Operation Sea Lion, the planned German invasion of England, which of course never came to be. Even so, his reporting, acquired via carrier pigeon and the plucky boy (Roddy McDowall) waiting long hours on a rooftop for the news from French observers attaching notes to the birds' legs, upsets the status quo. British Intelligence doesn't want the Germans to know that they know about the invasion. Don Ameche speaks often of the ninety million readers of his paper, their right to know the truth, but in a climactic moment, Joan Bennett wrestles with Ameche, knocks over the teletype after writing nonsense from his dictation.
Meanwhile, an unexploded bomb occupies the subterranean room, half buried in the concrete floor. More bombing in the world above collapses the basement's roof, the couple are trapped, fighting each other over release of the story.
The film praises censorship. It also seems to be an urging towards getting American audiences into the idea of going to war. Released five days after the Pearl Harbor attack it must've been made months earlier, but would've seemed timely to Americans stirred up by the idea of being bombed by a wicked enemy.
Archie Mayo directed from a Samuel Fuller story. Fritz Lang also directed parts of the film, but is uncredited. I couldn't detect any specifically Lang-type moments, other than the presence of Joan Bennett, whom he directed in four subsequent and far superior movies. Maybe they met on the set of Confirm or Deny?
I can't confirm it.
Vic Neptune
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