Very Cool!!!

the audience applauded

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Not made for US movie audiences consumption in that the film is far too disturbing as well as accurate in how successful interrogations tactics by the Germans in WWII worked. The film or documentary "Resisting Enemy Interrogation" is the exact opposite of the Hollywood made film "The Purple Heart" in how US airmen bravely resist and make their captors, in this case Japanese, look ridicules as well as stupid that was released the very same, 1944, year.Here we see the Germans use psychology and trickery to get the results that they want. That without those being interrogated not even knowing it. Not through torture and humiliation but through letting their captive US Airmen try to outsmart them and make them look like fools by instead tripping themselves up in them doing that. If the US and its allies used the same sound and tried tactics on captured suspected Al-Qeada and Taliban fighters after the attacks on 9/11 they would have gotten a lot more information and prevented, by putting their leaders out of commission, terror attacks then they had by instead getting false information out of them. That resulting in having sent the US military on a number of fruitless wild goose chases all over the globe.In the movie the Germans suspect a major low level attack on one of their oil installations in Southern occupied Europe and have captured a new B-99 US bomber's crew that was to take part of that attack. With the German intelligence officer Major Franz Kohmen knowing that the plane crew really knows nothing about where the attack is to take place he and his fellow interrogators make the US airmen feel or pretend that they in fact do know but are keeping the information from him. This has them unconsciously blurt out things that they feel will fool Major Khomen that he and his second in common Captain Volbricht skillfully figure out where he raid will actually be, Munich Germany, and when it would take place; May 17, 1944!The Germans way of getting information is just by letting the captured US fliers say wherever they want for what seemed like hours at a time with Major Kohmen an his men filtering out the little truths from the vast distortions and lies. This has them put together a blueprint of where the big US raid in Southern Europe will be and when it will take place. What was so amazing about all that is that Captain Kohmen got all that vital information without the captured US airmen, who unknowingly gave him that information, knowing it! That ended up costing the USAAF 21 bombers being shot down together with their 105 man crews as they were ambushed by squads of German fighter planes over the skies of Munich Germany.Very disturbing to watch movie released at the time when the US was in a life and death struggle with Nazi Germany which was in fact not released to general American public but only at US military bases. It was those men who watched it that had to get the real and hard cold facts in how to act if captured by the enemy. Not the general American public who were to be both propagandized and entertained, in lifting civilian moral at home, in watching the highly gong-ho inaccurate and feel good war movies that Hollywood was cranking out back in those days.

I had heard of this film over the years, and finally got to see it today. This is a clever use of film for training American flyers to clam up if they are captured. Our flyboys end up in the clutches of the clever Germans, who use all kinds non-violent means to soften up the unsuspecting GI's to give up info on an upcoming raid.Others have commented on the Germans using torture to get information, but it is known now that Herman Goering, who made sure the Luftwaffe kept shot down flyers, would not allow that. Lloyd Nolan's opening and closing lines are terrific. He gives the lesson it's exclamation point very well. I give it an 8 out of 10. Look for it to come on again and record it if you have to, just to get a glimpse of WWII film-making.

This film was originally produced and released as a training film for the Army Air Force during WWII. It covers the various (supposed) tactics that the Nazis would use to gather information from American (and other Allied Forces members) pilots and soldiers who are captured. Rather than being a dull, *by the numbers* lesson, however, the filmmakers present a solidly told little story in which the air crew of the mythical B-99 gradually...and presumably unintentionally...give up information that foils the success of a near-future air raid. If you see this, do tolerate a little preaching that occurs at the very end of the film (by an uncredited Lloyd Nolan) since this film WAS intended to teach a lesson; the ending is perfectly suitable for this kind of film. Certainly not on a par with Citizen Kane, but a solid enough piece of film making that deserves to be seen by a wider audience. 7* out of ten.

Thanks to TCM for giving us an opportunity to see this gem. Made by the Army Air Force's famous First Movie Unit well into the war (1944), this is one of their most polished efforts. It has a simple, but effective narrative: a US air crew of 5 is downed by the Nazis, who use every trick in the book (short of torture) to pump information out of them: ingratiation, intimidation, deceit and psychological welfare. None of the downed fliers means to co-operate with the enemy, but each in his own way contributes some information to their clever Nazis captors, which is then pieced together by the Nazi commanding officer, somewhat flamboyantly portrayed by Carl Esmond. The consequences are disaster.The point of the film as a training device (forcefully driven home by Lloyd Nolan in the closing sequence) was that ANY information, no matter how innocent or trivial seeming on its face, could complete the jigsaw puzzle for Nazi intelligence services. All that should EVER be revealed to ANYONE outside your own crew once you were captured was name, rank and serial number. A simple lesson, you would suppose, but for 70 minutes (rather lengthy by the genre's standards, I think) the point is expertly honed by a fairly effective little drama.In addition to Nolan, the other "big name" actor here is a young Arthur Kennedy, who appeared in many excellent films over the following quarter century.