Nine Men *** (1943, Jack Lambert, Gordon Jackson, Frederick Piper, Grant Sutherland, Bill Blewitt) – Classic Movie Review 4691

Writer-director Harry Watt’s 1943 realist-style World War Two war picture is minor but tense, interesting and impressive. It stars Jack Lambert as Sergeant Watson, Gordon Jackson as the Young ‘un, Frederick Piper as Banger Hill, Grant Sutherland as Jock Scott, and Bill Blewitt as Bill Parker.

Based on the story Umpity Poo by Gerald Kersh, Watt’s screenplay focuses on the tale of nine stalwart men of a British Army patrol holding out in a Libyan desert fort against the Italian enemy till relief comes during the North African campaign.

The film is remarkably well made on an obviously low budget (only £20,000) by an imaginative director Watt (who had just made the documentary Target for Tonight), in a story all told in flashback by Sergeant Watson to boost the morale of some new raw recruits at a British army training camp. This being 1943, the story naturally portrays the Italians as wine-swilling cowards running away.

It seems to have realism and ‘based on a true story’ written all over it, yet the closing credits reveal that ‘the events and characters portrayed in this film are fictitious any similarity to any incident, name or individual is coincidental.’

Short at 68 minutes, even with a time-filling prologue, it is a signpost to even better things from Ealing Studios.

Also in the cast are Eric Micklewood, John Varley, Jack Horsman, Richard Wilkinson, Giulio Finzi, Fred Griffiths and Trevor Evans.

It is shot by Roy Kellino, produced by Michael Balcon and Charles Chrichton, scored by John Greenwood and designed by Duncan Sutherland.

Umpity Poo equals the French ‘un petit peu’, by the way.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4691

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