Operation Mincemeat

I remember the Goons version of that. Superb. They actually called it "The Man Who Never Was"

Tom, I saw it, but thought that Ben MacIntyre's gimmicks in portraying the story detracted from the brilliant piece of deception that he sought to portray.

How could the plotters possibly have expected to get away with it? But they did, and conned Evil Adolf himself!

(For those who missed it, it's still available on BBC's iPlayer for the next few days.)

I think that the old B&W film was actually much more interesting, although it was apparently highly censored at the time.

Yes I could have done without some of the "reconstructions" and expect it wasn't all Ben MacIntyre's idea. It seems to be the way of things though.

I didn't see this programme though I have watched the film a few times. This plot and many more like it are covered in this highly readable book;


As it says on the cover; the British genius for deception, something we truly excelled at in both World Wars.

An excellent account of an amazing "did they really get away with that" tale.

Unfortunately these "re-enactments, and 'star' presenters, do distract from these type of programmes unfortunately.

I suspect producers have their eyes on the programmes later life on History, Dave etc so the "ad" breaks are built into even BBC stuff and seeing the presenter(unless it's Betany Huges) seems to be the norm,shame as it can take the gloss off.

quote:

Originally posted by graham55:
... thought that Ben MacIntyre's gimmicks in portraying the story detracted from the brilliant piece of deception that he sought to portray.

Given half an hour of radio time you will normally get half an hour of information.

The potential advantage of television is that we can be presented with images of main characters and locations, contemporary film, diagrams and the like.

What we get, as well, are tedious reconstructions of typewriters spelling out what we are being told, guys in rowing boats and minor, living (obviously), protagonists being dragged out to where they posed for photographs. It is the tyranny of the visual and it makes all but the strong go mad.

Worse, in some ways, are the documentaries (Apocalypse - the Second World War) were generalised footage (Hitler playing with a dog, Hitler boarding a 'plane, Hitler speaking to Mussolini) illustrates specific events - probably unfilmed. It would be of interest to read the expressions on their faces but not if filmed four years earlier and edited to 'fit the words'.

Such deception makes the genuine harder to recognise and devalues it.

[Colourising is pretty weird too.

History cannot be black & white - literally.]

I also enjoyed the preceding programme about the raid on St Nazaire. Clarkson can be a good presenter when he puts his mind to it, cf his programmes on recipients of the VC and Brunel.

Good point about radio, description, but to turn it about the 'visual of the tyranny', death camps for example I don't believe it can be represented by any thing other than at least photographs, but panning shots of the huge size of these camps and their inmates, are literally indescribable.

I enjoy the Apocalypse WW2, but like Adam, the colourised film does take some getting used to. Maybe the best shots aren't use if they are still in B&W?

WW2 in colour series recently used actual and quite rare colour film stock shots and it seemed more 'real' for some reason.

I still watch these documentaries, because 99% of them have me saying at the end, know I didn't know that, about some aspect of the programme, justification to continue watching I think.

Perhaps the cuts and reduction in the number of Media Studies students will help to tighten up the production qualities of TV programs.

yeah I love watching documentaries on WW2, and always great to see something you didn't know. It is important history to learn from.

There's a great series on Turner movies over here about the moguls of hollywood and one part was how they had created "Americana" but with Hitler rising to power, and most of them being Jewish immigrants, they created stories to give Americans a reason to go to war. Then filming everything that they could. That was a huge feat of propaganda, good and bad.

Ben MacIntyre is also the author of this book that I read a few months back. Well worth a read.

Regards

Nic