{"id":16310,"date":"2016-01-11T02:14:23","date_gmt":"2016-01-11T02:14:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/?p=16310"},"modified":"2016-01-11T02:16:47","modified_gmt":"2016-01-11T02:16:47","slug":"the-captive-heart-1946","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2016\/01\/11\/the-captive-heart-1946\/","title":{"rendered":"The Captive Heart (1946)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Set in a German POW camp for British soldiers this drama stars <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Michael_Redgrave\">Michael Redgrave<\/a> as a Czech agent, who assumes the identity of a deceased British officer to avoid the Nazis.<\/p>\n<p>Director Basil Dearden was a prolific figure in pre and post-war British cinema at <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ealing_Studios\">Ealing Studios<\/a>, co-directing comedies films like The Goose Steps Out (1942), influential horror anthology Dead of Night (1945) and The Blue Lamp (1950) &#8211; the latter spawning PC George Dixon of TVs \u2018<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Dixon_of_Dock_Green\">Dixon of Dock Green<\/a>\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>Although a prolific figure in British and international cinema &#8211; with films such as Khartoum (1966) &#8211; he had his detractors, including David Thomson who wrote in his <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_New_Biographical_Dictionary_of_Film\">New Biographical Dictionary of Film<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cHis films are decent, empty, and plodding and his association with Michael Relph is a fair representative of the British preference for bureaucratic cinema.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There is some truth to this, and it can even be detected in a serious war drama like The Captive Heart. The stilted upper class speech of officers and the borderline comic cockney tones of infantrymen are all here in abundance.<\/p>\n<p>Despite this, it is still&nbsp;worth seeing.<\/p>\n<p>The original purpose may have been to ease British audiences back to normality, but its depiction of a blinded soldier (Gordon Jackson) and the complex nature of Michael Redgrave\u2019s character do still resonate in this era of wounded veterans fresh from wars in the Middle East.<\/p>\n<p>Another curious parallel is that the central conceit of the film is strikingly similar to a key plot element of TV modern classic <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mad_Men\">Mad Men<\/a> (2007-2015) &#8211; that of a major character posing as another man who died during World War II.<\/p>\n<p>Other elements of interest include its release right after the war and use of actual prisoner of war camps in Germany. One of these was near <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Westertimke\">Westertimke<\/a>, which had remained largely intact after the end of the conflict.<\/p>\n<p>Produced by the legendary <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Carl_Foreman\">Carl Foreman<\/a>, it ultimately remains a standard issue World Two melodrama, not great but not too bad either.<\/p>\n<p>&gt; The Captive Heart on <a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/1OcXX4k\">Blu-ray<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Captive-Heart-Digitally-Restored-DVD\/dp\/B00U3PW5J6\/\">DVD<\/a> at Amazon UK<br \/>\n&gt; <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Basil_Dearden\">More about Basil Dearden<\/a> at Wikipedia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Set in a German POW camp for British soldiers this drama stars Michael Redgrave as a Czech agent, who assumes the identity of a deceased British officer to avoid the Nazis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2853],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16310"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16310"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16317,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16310\/revisions\/16317"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}