The Captive Heart Review

Prisoners To Love

♦ Tripwire reviews British war film The Captive Heart, directed by Basil Dearden

The Captive Heart

Director: Basil Dearden

Stars: Michael Redgrave, Rachel Kempson, Mervyn Johns, Gordon Jackson

The Captive Heart was a war film made by Ealing and released back in 1946, the year after the end of the Second World War. Director Dearden went on to direct The League of Gentlemen and The Man Who Haunted Himself. The Captive Heart is a well-made but fairly unremarkable film about a group of British soldiers living in a POW camp in Germany. Redgrave plays a Czech man who has stolen the identity of deceased British captain Geoff Mitchell to avoid capture by the Nazis and has found himself in the camp where he is initially treated with suspicion but they soon warm to him. Mitchell, real name Karel Hasek, falls for the real Mitchell’s wife back in England, Celia, played by Rachel Kempson. The cast also includes Gordon Jackson who plays a Scottish soldier who is blinded and forced to live the rest of his days sightless and Mervyn Johns as Private Evans, a Welsh soldier who is unsure if he would ever fit in if he was released and sent back to the UK. Redgrave is very likeable as Jackson and Kempson is decent as Mitchell’s wife. Many of the old British war film tropes are on screen here from the digging of an escape tunnel to some good-natured banter between many of the occupants. It isn’t as distinctive as later Ealing output but director Dearden keeps the action moving with pizazz and style and the cast are solid enough. It’s worth a look as a British movie curio.

JOEL MEADOWS

The Captive Heart [DVD]

Studio Canal