Don't listen to the negative reviews

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Recently Film Four in the UK has been screening vintage British films from the 30s and 40s and this entry directed by Puffin Asquith demonstrates just how superior his early work was compared with that of Carol Reed. Reed in fact tackled a similar subject to this the year previously but his Night Train To Munich is light years away from Freedom Radio which is never risible. Okay, they had ten writers on the project and a leading man and leading lady who today would seem mannered in the extreme but they were surrounded by excellent supporting players such as Raymond Huntley, Ronald Squire, Martita Hunt, Bernard Miles and Katie Johnson, so memorable some fifteen years later in the original The Ladykillers. Reed's screenplay had nothing, for example, to compare with Ronald Squire's droll comeback when asked how he enjoyed his recent trip to America 'I didn't go to America, I went to New York'. Clive Brook manages to personify decency and the outrage felt by ordinary Germans at what they observed going on around them - again Puffin employs a crisp economical montage involving boutonnieres that disappear one by one as do their owners. A fine effort.

In the months leading up to Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia, Hitler's own doctor gradually realises the Nazi's oppressive regime is wrong and must be opposed. His resolve is strengthened as he witnesses his wife and brother-in-law blithely embrace National Socialism.Rather nifty and extremely stylish little mid-war British propaganda piece, fascinatingly mixing cut-glass accents and 'stiff-upper-lip' acting styles with Nazi uniforms and thuggery. Though all scenes are studio-bound, this actually lends itself to the clinically oppressive atmosphere, as the viewer watches characters apparently walking late-night Berlin streets, or steering a motor launch along a canal, or watching a train pass, all the time knowing that they are confined under a sound stage roof.Freedom Radio contains an array of delicious performances, particularly amongst the supporting players - Martita Hunt as a duplicitous alcoholic, eyes flashing as she takes revenge on an innocent neighbour; Raymond Huntley's oily senior Nazi officer determined to outfox and destroy any resistance; the beautiful John Penrose's captivating portrayal of Otto, a young man seduced and corrupted by the Nazi regime. We even see a brief, early appearance by Joan Hickson over 40 years before Miss Marple! Try and track this down if you can - a must for all fans of British pre- and inter-war film and long-gone British character actors alike.

This is the sort of intelligent movie you simply won't meet with in modern cinema. Yes, it's blatant propaganda, and yet the film serves so much more as a clarion call for justice, civility, and yes, freedom too. What we have in the lead character, Dr. Roder has got to be one of the most real, most believable and admirable heroes in of cinema.My advice is don't get bogged down with the occasional stuffiness of the production, enjoy this exultation on the bravery inside those who are able to stand up for what they believe in.It's a shame Freedom Radio will only ever get seldom showings on obscure channels in the mid-afternoon. This is the sort of film we'd do well to show in history classes.

This film has a lot to say about to what extent the allied powers knew about the horrors of the Nazi regime by 1940. The "cleared for general viewing" notice that appears just before this film starts adds a small something to this film now.It tells its story of a decent doctor in Nazi Germany effectively. No explicit violence is used - yet its remarkable how powerful a bullet-riddled door or a Nazi thug approaching a young girl for "assistance" about her grandmother can be.