OPERATION Mincemeat, the compelling new film by the acclaimed director John Madden, tells a factual story that is far stranger than fiction.
The movie is set in 1943, and focuses on the extraordinary story of two intelligence officers, Ewen Montagu and Charles Cholmondeley, who changed the course of World War II. They saved tens of thousands of lives and broke Hitler’s deadly grip on Europe, by recruiting the skills of the most unlikely of secret agents: a dead man.
With Academy-award winner Colin Firth, as Ewen Montagu, and Emmy-nominated Matthew Macfadyen, as Charles Cholmondeley, the scene of the film is set in a dingy basement in central London, where the top secret Twenty Committee of Naval Intelligence, led by the two main characters, were presented with their challenges.
Ben Macintyre, the bestselling author on whose book of the same name the film is based, explains why this scarcely credible episode was such a pivotal moment in the global conflict.
“Operation Mincemeat was probably the most successful military deception operation ever carried out,” he said.
“What the deceivers had to do was to try to persuade the Germans that black was white and white was black. And they did this in the most extraordinary way. It now sounds like it comes straight out of fiction, which is exactly where it came from.”
Adding to the richness of the tale is the central love triangle that grows between Jean Leslie, played by Kelly Macdonald, Montagu and Cholmondeley. Firth expands on this.
“A huge affection develops between these two men. But they are both in love with Jean,” he said.
“Jean cares for both of them, so it becomes this is very, very complex tussle of unresolved and unexpressed emotions, which is fed by the very high stakes they are operating in and this tiny, compressed, cloistered environment. They are thrown so closely together in a common cause.”
Operation Mincemeat is now showing at Swan Hill Showbiz Cinemas.
