Circle of Deception (1960)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Wonderful character development!

Great Film overall

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Years ago, I read "Op JB" by Christopher Creighton. It was published in 1996 and was supposedly true, telling of secret missions during WW2 carried out by the author. The veracity of the book is still debated.I must admit I wasn't sure what to believe until I came to the part where the author claimed he was used by M-Section to persuade the Germans that the Allied invasion of Europe would focus on the Pas de Calais rather than Normandy. His superiors betrayed his identity as a British agent to the SS so that under torture he would confirm the story, which he thought to be true. He was then rescued by M-section and returned to Britain.That's when I thought, "I know this story". It was the plot of "A Circle of Deception" starring Bradford Dillman, which I had seen in the 1960's. My belief in the book lessened considerably after I made that connection."A Circle of Deception" was a forerunner of the more cynical, anti-hero films about WW2 that hit with a vengeance in the 1960's. Then WW2 movies often became surrogates for the Vietnam War, which didn't get its own movies until it was over."Circle of Deception" didn't have massive stars. Bradford Dillman seemed a modern sort of actor mainly from television. His character, Captain Paul Raine, is chosen for the mission because it is believed he will crack under torture and give the Nazis the misinformation the British want them to have. Whatever baggage Dillman carried in 1960 is long gone; now he is convincing as the operative who wrestles to overcome his fears.Harry Andrews as Captain Rawson the intelligence chief who devised the mission is perfect. Head of Section roles were an Andrews' specialty.Suzy Parker played Lucy Bowen, Rawson's assistant who becomes romantically involved with Raine. Suzy had the look of those beautiful women that artists painted for the glossy magazine illustrations of the day; the camera loved her.The interrogation scenes gave the film an edge, especially Robert Stephens as the urbane German intelligence officer who played good cop against the vicious Gestapo guys. Only the prison escape at the end smacked of standard movie heroics.However, even after 50 years, this well-made film is still a bit of downer with its rather ruthless sacrifice of a British agent for the greater good.

****SPOILERS**** The movie shows the lengths those during war time would go to achieve their missions. Even in the case of tricking the bright eyed and bushy tailed Canadian Leut. Paul Raine, Bradford Dillman, to not only go beyond the call of duty but death itself in unknowingly giving false information to the enemy by having it beaten and tortured out of him. Dropped into Nazi occupied France in the spring of 1944 Raine, who speaks perfect Franch, is told to contact the French underground in coordination with their attacks of German installations as the allies pull off their D-Day invasion. Unknown to Raine is that he's being set up with false information to be caught and tortured by the Nazi Gestopo to brake down and spill the beans on the invasion of Western Europe. That to make them think that the invasion is to take place some 200 miles away from it's original landing points!Thinking he's doing the right thing Raine endures the most brutal torture including being water-boarding, a major war crime according to the Geneva War Accords of 1929, that Nazis could dish out. Only after the poison pill he was given by his boss Capt. Thomas Rawson, Harry Andrews, turned out to be a dud and thus prevented him from peacefully popping off and meeting his maker that the by now completely broken Raine finally gave in. Rescued by the French underground and given free passage to Tangier's Morocco after the war Raines is now a completely defeated and broken man feeling he let down his men in spilling the beans about where the cross channel invasion was to take place.***SPOILERS*** It's when the person who help set, together with Capt. Rawson, Raine up Leut. Bowen, Suzy Parker,that the poor and confused Raine up came to see him at the Bal Aldo Bar & Hotel that he finally got the story straight: He's in fact a hero who gave his all including his sanity for the allied cause not a coward who sold his men, after being brutally tortured, out to the enemy! This was no surprise to those of us watching but only to Raine who in his depression never bothered to even read a newspaper or listen to a radio broadcast after he was rescued from his captors. And in fact thought all that time that he screwed up the D-Day invasion plans by the allies which in fact he helped make a complete and smashing success!

When 20th Century Fox entered TV in the 1950s, one of the programs was an hour-long anthology series. This series took many Fox classics (THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR, HOUSE OF STRANGERS, MIRACLE ON 34th STREET, THE LATE GEORGE APLEY, YOUNG MR. LINCOLN, et al) and reduced them to less-than-an-hour. One of the entries in that series was titled DECEPTION, and it starred Linda Darnell and Trevor Howard; it was about a woman intelligence officer in charge of a complicated spy mission: she has to pick a man who will turn out to be a coward, so that he can be given false information which he will divulge (under torture) to the Nazis. Unless i'm very much mistaken, this is one instance when the TV episode was embellished into a feature film (made in 1961). The movie provides a lot more exposition, but the story is the same, including the female intelligence officer seeking out the man after the war. This film stars Suzy Parker as the intelligence agent, and Bradford Dillman as the man; soon after this movie, they would marry and she would retire from acting. Though they don't have the same depth as Darnell (an exceptional performance) and Howard, Parker and Dillman are nevertheless quite a glamorous couple (as they were in real life).(Though the film is well-done, the TV show, in this instance, packed more of a punch, and the performances of Linda Darnell and Trevor Howard were exceptional.)

Bradford Dillman is an American tapped for a dangerous mission behind enemy lines in the campaign of deception leading up to D-Day--except that he's only been told half the story by his superiors. The story is based on real-life exploits documented in Anthony Cave Brown's book *Bodyguard of Lies,* (the title of which was based on Churchill's famous comment, "In wartime, truth is so precious that she must always be attended by a bodyguard of lies"). Dillman is completely convincing as the spy who is selected precisely because his psychological profile shows that he *will* eventually break under torture. The depiction of torture itself is pretty grueling, by the way, especially for 1961, and one scene in particular was parodied in the 1984 Abrahams-Zucker movie *Top Secret!* (with Val Kilmer in the Dillman part). Incidentally, Dillman and his co-star, Suzy Parker, who was the top model in America at the time, and embarking on a film and television career, fell in love while making this movie and married shortly thereafter; she gave up both her modeling and acting career for domestic life as Mrs. Dillman not long afterward.