Clouds Over Europe

The young Oliver and Richardson -- especially Richardson -- are obviously having a ball in this mix of spies, high adventure, and tongue in cheek comedy According to Michael Powell, the two stars tore up the script, and devised their own scenes, and the pleasure they have in sending up the material, and in each other's work, shines through. (In fact, once or twice, Oliver seems to be trying not to crack up at Richardson's antics.) Patrick Macnee says he based The Avengers' John Steed on Richardson's character in this film, and that, too, shows. Thrills, spills,secret rays, gags and eccentric British characters, and villains from a country suspiciously reminiscent of Germany, but not named in 1938.

Some 20 years before Ian Fleming started writing about these things, it's nice to know that the British Secret Service was on the job and apprehending spies and saboteurs even if they're a bit slow to catch on at times.

With a little inside help from the air plant, some Teutonic looking gentleman have perfected a ray that immobilizes airships and brings them down real nice on the ocean. No trace of about four warships has been found at all or their crews. It's of concern to test pilot Laurence Olivier, to British agent Ralph Richardson, and to news reporter Valerie Hobson.

Hobson and Richardson are brother and sister. As you can imagine his job involves secrecy and undercover work and Hobson's from the Lois Lane school of journalism. Family dinners must really be something in that family. She also falls for Olivier while she's undercover working as a waitress at a coffee shop near the plane factory.

Q Planes must have been seen as wildly fantastic by the 1939 audience, but two generations who saw Sean Connery and Roger Moore engage in even wilder derring-do than is shown in this film, would regard Q Planes as all in a day's work.

Olivier and Hobson are fine, but Richardson steals the film whenever he's on screen. Q Planes will never be ranked as in the top 10 of any of these players, but it's a nice breezy espionage comedy/drama made a lot better by some of the greatest thespian talent in the English speaking world of the last century.

... instead it is a fun little espionage piece with a witty script with its tongue placed firmly in its cheek. Set during the tense years preceding the outbreak of WWII, the Brits are losing experimental aircraft (the titular Q Planes) in mysterious circumstances, and Ralph Richardson's character is head of a government agency out to discover whats really going on, whilst Valerie Hobson is seemingly a spy for a foreign power, trying none-too-subtly to extract information from a bemused, cynical test pilot played by Laurence Olivier just before he headed off to bigger things.

The tone of the film is set from the initial scene, which opens with a composed, but confused Richardson trying to work out what he's doing in a trashed room, why he's surrounded by police, and what the heck his own name is.

Aside from a fun plot & great cast, there are some neat period aircraft up for viewing, for those with an interest in such things. Some other interesting tidbits that Wikipedia turned up are that airfield shots in the film were filmed at Brooklands (an early center of aviation & motor racing) and that the film was apparently based off actual events where the British government believed that the Germans were behind the downing of an experimental plane over the English Channel, so they helped fund this movie to let the Germans know that they were on to them, without any messy diplomatic unpleasantness being needed.

Everyone involved with this brisk comedy/thriller seems to be enjoying themselves immensely. It's a ripping yarn about spies, disappearing planes and a secret ray gun, lit up by Olivier and Richardson, with lots of cheerful gags along the way. It's dated, of course, but if you can leave that aside it's still good fun.

You really can't go wrong with Ralph Richardson in a cast, and it holds true with "Clouds Over Europe," a 1939 film that also stars Laurence Olivier and Valerie Hobson.

It's pre-WW II, and Richardson plays a secret service man in England who is convinced that a series of missing planes from diverse places is no accident. He's convinced the planes are being sabotaged, but by whom, and why?

Olivier plays one of the pilots, and he's funny as well as handsome. Valerie Hobson is a reporter in an adversarial relationship with Olivier. She turns out to be related to someone else in the film.

But it's Richardson who steals the show with his eccentric portrayal of Major Charles Hammond, a man who always forgets his umbrella and returns for it. He helps to give this affair a lightheartedness that makes it enjoyable.

Recommended for its very good British cast.