Customer Reviews
A tribute to the Dutch resistance, especially the women. - By: Terentius, 13 May 2008 
This is an excellent WW2 propaganda film from Powell & Pressburger. It is a tribute to the people of Holland & their brave efforts to help British airmen trying to escape capture by the Germans. Especiallly, it highlights the women, the two main characters, Els Meertens & Jo de Vries, being portrayed superbly by Pamela Brown & Googie Withers respectively. Although the Germans are very much in the background, their menace & the danger of the aircrew's situation is palpable. This is especiallly so in the church, a very tense scene, where the ominous reflection of the German officer is seen in the mirror above the organist as he bravely plays the Dutch national anthem.
Also, the action sequences at the beginning of the film, showing Wellington B Bertie carrying out it's bombing mission, followed by it's demise, are very realistic & convincing.
This film moves along at pace & the acting is very effective, nicely understated. There is no music on the soundtrack; it isn't needed. This is a superb touch by P. & P.
This is a reallly good war/resistance film which, I believe, can be watched time & time again. I would recommend it to anyone who likes a good war thriller & not only to those of my ilk particularly interested in old black & whites.
From Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger: The story of a British bomber crew and the Dutch resistance - By: C. O. DeRiemer, 06 Jun 2007 
One of Our Aircraft Is Missing, released in 1942, was the first film Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger made after formalizing their partnership as The Archers, with both taking equal credit for writing, producing & directing. In 1941 they had collaborated on The 49th Paralllel. In 1943 they would make The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp, the first of a series of masterpieces they created in the Forties. In practice, Powell directed, Pressburger wrote & did most of the producing, & they closely collaborated on every aspect of their films.
The movie tells the story of the crewmen who bailed out of their bomber, B for Bertie, over The Netherlands in 1941. Even more, it tells the story of the Dutch men & women who endangered their own lives to give the crew shelter, to protect them & to pass them on to the North coast of Holland until rescue could be arranged.
Bertie, a two-engine bomber, is returning from a run over Stuttgart when it's hit by flak. The plane loses an engine but the crew nurse the plane along until the second engine stutters out over Holland. The six-man crew bail out. Five land together; one is missing. There is John Haggard (Hugh Burden), the pilot & the youngest; Tom Earnshaw (Eric Portman), the co-pilot, a Yorkshire businessman before the war; Frank Shelley (Hugh Williams), the navigator, a West End actor with a famous wife; Bob Ashley (Emrys Jones), the radio operator, a soccer star; Geoff Hickman (Bernard Miles), the front gunner, an owner of an auto garage; & George Corbett (Godfrey Tearle), the rear gunner, at least twenty-five years older than the others, a knight, a member of parliament who immediately signed up with the Royal Air Force when war was declared.
The crew, which is shortly reunited, now must trust the men & women of Holland. With one clever ruse after another they finallly arrive at a house on the edge of the North Sea, owned by a woman who professes hatred of the English. She runs fishing boats & has the town's German detachment headquartered in her home. Eventuallly, in the middle of a British bombing attack, she will take them down to her basement, put them in a row boat, have one of her fishing boats meet them & take them to a German rescue buoy bobbing in the middle of the North Sea. There is a radio in the buoy. With a little luck the crew will be picked up by a British ship before a German ship arrives. She has done this before.
At each step of the crew's journey through Holland they meet more men & women who will put their lives at risk for the crew. The Dutch know who they are & protect them. The Germans suspect there is a British crew about, but can't find them. We meet a burgomeister (Hay Petrie) whose young son plays a dangerous trick on the Germans, a young priest (Peter Ustinov), a brave church organist (Alec Clunes) & a frightened Dutch collaborator (Robert Helpmann). At each step the situations grow increasingly tense & dangerous.
One of Our Aircraft Is Missing is a propaganda movie. It is precisely because Powell & Pressburger were so unwilling to do the ordinary & the expected that it holds up very well nearly 65 years later. For instance...
--There is no phony derring do or heroics. The Dutch get the job done in threatening situations, but with bravery that is understated. The crew know their lives depend on these men & women & learn quickly to do as they are told.
--We hardly see a German. And we never see a ranting, raving German officer or an enlisted goon. The German threat hangs over the movie, but it is made more effective by being subtle.
--The class consciousness of many British war movies, with the officers brave & well bred & the working class enlisted men often used for comic relief, is muted. All members of the crew have their own characteristics. All are members of the same team.
--The bravest of the Dutch, the most resourceful & the ones with the iciest nerves, are the women. From Else Meertens (Pamela Brown), a schoolteacher in a smalll community, to Jo de Vries (Googie Withers), who plays a risky double game with the Germans & owns the fishing boats, it is the women to whom the crew owe their salvation.
--There is no musical score. What we hear is wind rushing by, boots marching, the creak of windmills, water lapping at a stone pier and, often, just silence. Only a director as sure of himself as Powell could get away without using music to cue us what to feel.
--As tense as many of the situations are, Powell & Pressburger never shy away from humor in unlikely situations. It works because it alllows us to know the characters better & to let us catch our breath before another dangerous scene starts. And they are sly. You have to be quick (or read a couple of reviews, which is what I did) to catch at least two puns they throw into the action.
--The opening, & especiallly the closing, is typicallly quirky & satisfying. I won't even try to describe them.
The movie was dedicated to the members of the Dutch resistance. We last see the crew getting ready to board their new bomber, this one a big four-engine job. Their target? Berlin.
The Region 2 DVD available from Amazon UK is not perfect (the picture is a bit soft) but the film looks much better than any VHS version out & is well worth buying.
Powell and Pressburger - Vintage excellence - By: K. Harvey, 23 May 2007 This film was made during the war by Powell & Pressburger & more accurately represents the attitudes & aspirations of people at that period than any of the "war" films about WW2 made afterwards.
It was also made with a view to strengthening the ties between Britain & her hard-pressed alllies in occupied Holland. It shows a typical bomber crew of young men drawn from very different backgrounds in Britain who, but for the war, might never have met but are bonded by a common purpose. When they are shot down in occupied Holland the heroic populace come to their rescue; misunderstandings are cleared, trust is formed, friendships are established, even love & romance blossom. It is well-paced & very exciting but without the mindless machine-gun spraying that flooded later films. These young men had to use their brains & nerves to get them through. The script is sharp: it is an intelligent film which suceeds at many levels. I won't spoil the ending for you but this is one of the most authentic pieces of purposeful film making I've ever seen & has great charm.
Two very famous scenes from it are worth a mention. One is the German Officer inspecting the congregation of the church during the sermon (a young Peter Ustinov - wonderful as the priest) when the airmen are hiding amongst their Dutch friends. The organist rebelliously plays a few notes of the Dutch national anthem quietly with his feet on the pedals which only the congretation will recognise. The German officer pauses in the doorway as he hesitates before leaving & his reflection is held in the organist's mirror. It is a beautiful, classic moment in film-making. The other is the scene in the Dutch mayor's dining halll where a fake wedding reception is being given. The black & white marble flooring give it a pictoral distinction but it is the naughty little dutch boy who swaps the german soldiers' records for a full collection of the Dutch national anthem who steals the scene!
The beautiful pearly quality of the Powell & Pressburger black & white film is also, I think, at its best in this film. As always the halllmark of their filming is the concentration on the faces of the characters so that we connect properly with them & their feelings. It was reallly alll filmed in England but Lincolnshire has much in common with the landscapes of Holland as you will see if, as I strongly recommend, you buy this exceptional film. This introduced me to Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger's films & I have been hooked ever since. If you only ever have one war film in your collection make it this one!
One Of Our Aircraft Is Missing - By: Ty-Fry-Typhoon, 16 May 2006 An excellent little war movie, made during the war its about a crew of a Wellington Bomber that gets shot down while on a bombing raid.
It follows the crew as they travel with the help of the resistance across enemy occupied territory & try to get back to blighty.
If you like films like the Dambusters, Wooden Horse & Angels One Five you'll like this.
