MovieChat Forums > The Man Who Never Was (1956) Discussion > Terrific movie, with just one gaping fla...

Terrific movie, with just one gaping flaw... (spoiler)

posted 8 years ago by felstein
3 replies | jump to latest

I saw this on Netflix last night. I had never heard of it before, and it certainly deserves to be better known. There was just one big problem I had with it: The scene with O'Reilly, Lucy and Pam was unbelievably contrived. Lucy just happened to have found out about her boyfriend's death just before she arrived home at that particular moment, and she just happened to be the type of person who mixed fantasy and reality in the way that she did and so (inadvertently) said everything that would have convinced O'Reilly that William Martin was real. That was WAY too much to swallow.

But that aside, it was an absolutely perfect film.

EDIT: Sorry, forgot to put (spoiler) in the subject line!

[–] tremas-1 8 years ago

Chalk it up to dramatic license by the script writers. It was a contrived plot twist to ratchet up the tension. In actual fact, nothing like that happened.
By the way, this is one of my favorite movies. It prompted me to buy the two books that tell the real story.

[–] hobnob53 8 years ago

That scene and the plot point around it certainly are contrived and way too coincidental. Another dumb aspect was their including not only a photo of Lucy in "Major Martin's" wallet (and calling her by her real name in the letter), but having that letter on stationery with her actual address on it -- making it supremely easy for anyone to check her out.

Since the whole point was to make sure all of Martin's papers leaked to the Germans, they should have known that if the Germans sent in a spy he'd investigate Lucy. Why create such a gapingly false cover story without making sure the person affected knew about the plan and could play along if need be? No brains involved there.

Still, as has been noted, nothing like that happened in real life anyway.

[–] JacintoCupboard 8 years ago

Regarding your last line, in the actual events they DID include a photo of one of their own office staff. This would be the equivalent of Josephine Griffin's character. So there is really no need to have a second female character, and least of all to have her unaware of how she was involved.

That whole romantic subplot was a cynical attempt to emotionally milk an audience, not long after the war itself and when emotions would have been raw. It has no artistic merit at all and as the OP points out, inserts a real flaw into the plan that never existed in reality.