This is best remembered today for being the last movie Clark Gable made at MGM - his still potent star power helped propel this to "unlikely hit" status, with the "unlikely" arising because it isn't very good. Still it does have Gable, Lana Turner and Victor Mature all hilariously miscast as Dutchmen, plus colour photography and the novelty of a film set around the Battle of Arnhem.
Gable is the head of Dutch Intelligence who is rescued from the Germans by local resistance leader Victor Mature (giving the best performance in the best part). He goes back to England and trains (and falls in love with) Lana Turner, who is parachuted into Holland. The movie forgets about Gable for a while and becomes about Turner and Mature (although a love triangle is, disappointingly, never developed - Mature is obsessed with his mother and wears a flamboyant scarf... are we meant to think he's gay?). Then Gable begins to think there is a traitor in the nest and is convinced it's Turner.
This is consistently silly, whether its the three leads pretending they're Dutch, or characters taking time out from massed battles to go off and have personal dramas (the invasion of Europe has begun and Wilfrid Hyde White gives Gable a month's leave!), or Victor Mature's obsession with his mother, or Gable having a fight with a German general but it's filmed in long shot and is clearly done by a body double, or Lana Turner trying to act in a role that cried out for Ava Gardner, or Gable trying to hide how uncomfortable he is with his role.
It does get some points for originality: Mature is inspired to betray the resistance, not because of cash but after some locals shave his mother's head. There is some pleasing location filming in the Netherlands and I enjoyed Hyde-White's boffin-but-not-really general.
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