Tue 25 May 2010
A TV Review by Curt Evans: FOYLE’S WAR – Episode 1: The German Woman (2002).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[27] Comments
FOYLE’S WAR. ITV (UK), PBS (US). Episode One: The German Woman. 27 October 2002 (UK date). Michael Kitchen (Det. Supt. Christopher Foyle), Honeysuckle Weeks (Samantha Stewart), Anthony Howell (Sgt. Paul Milner), Edward Fox, Robert Hardy, David Horovitch, Joanna Kanska, Dominic Mafham, Julian Ovenden, Rosamund Pike, Elizabeth Bell, James McAvoy. Series creator: Anthony Horowitz.
Eight years after it aired, I finally watched the first episode of the Foyle’s Way series, “The German Woman.” I see what the fuss has been about now.
Beautifully filmed, splendidly cast and intelligently written, this debut episode in the series has a lot about it to like. As the Detective Superintendent, Michael Kitchen has amazing gravitas and droll charm. His character is Always Right on the weighty moral issues this and other episodes of the series address, and you just wish he were in charge of the whole darn, messed-up world.
Kitchen seems too splendid an actor for one not to have seen him before — I do remember him from Enchanted April but not from Out of Africa (of course this film is from 25 years ago!) and I can’t recall seeing him anything else. Any road, he’ll be remembered in posterity for this series, I have no doubt, just like David Suchet will be for Poirot.
As his spunky driver “Sam,” Honeysuckle Weeks is an amazingly appealing presence who gives the series an acceptable bit of Girl Power! She looks so young here too, in this episode from eight years ago.
Foyle’s son, Andrew, is played by Julian Ovenden, who had a role in the Poirot film After the Funeral. He makes less of an impression here, but I understand that the character developed more over the course of the series (he did not appear in the latest season).
Anthony Howell, the very serious son from Wives and Daughters, the 1999 film of the Elizabeth Gaskell novel, plays the very serious Sergeant Paul Milner, the wounded war hero (he lost part of a leg) who goes to work for Foyle in the police force. He’s always a strong and substantial presence.
The supporting cast is an embarrassment of riches, with David Horovitch (Inspector Slack from the Joan Hickson “Marple” series and Isaac from Ivanhoe) as a victimized German internee, Robert Hardy as a foolish aristocrat (he played this role before — very well — in Middlemarch), Rosmaund Pike (seen most recently in the Oscar-nominated film An Education) as his snide and bratty daughter and James McAvoy — now a major film star — in the small but memorably played role of the lovelorn druggist’s assistant.
This excellent cast stars in a film that addresses the morality of Britain’s alien internment policy during World War Two. Just as the United States instituted an unjust internment policy in regard to the Japanese residents in the country, so did Britain in regard to Germans and Italians. In some cases, even German Jewish refuges were rounded up — a rather obviously nonsensical policy.
The unjustness of all this is touched on by “The German Woman,” and most happily, it’s done within the framework of a classical, Golden Age style British mystery. The German wife of a local bigwig aristocrat is herself left untouched and resentment against her stirs in the local community after a German bomb is dropped on a pub, killing a young woman.
When the German woman is killed in a particularly nasty way while out riding, it’s thought a local seeking revenge on Germans may be responsible, but other paths of suspicion appear as well, some leading within the confines her own family….
You might, as I did, suspect a certain party very quickly, but motive still provides an interesting question. The only quibble I would have is that the murderer, when confronted by Foyle, quite improbably confesses; but this is a script convenience I can pass over with so many other excellences. This is British mystery film making at its highest level.
Editorial Comment: Truth in Advertising. Although I do not remember it, it is possible that the first photo of the three stars together came from this first episode, but almost assuredly the second one did not.
May 25th, 2010 at 1:38 pm
This episode of FOYLE’S WAR remains my favorite of all the ones I’ve seen before.
In fact, I will go so far as to say that it is my favorite of any episode of any mystery or detective series on television that I have ever seen.
Every time I watch it, I see things happening that I did not see or notice before.
Michael Kitchen can say more without saying anything than any other actor I can think. Just watch his eyes, his face. Without uttering a word, he can convey exactly what his character is thinking. He’s marvelous, no two ways about it.
I’ve also looked over his TV and movie credits, without finding anything ever shown widely in the US that would tell me I should have been aware of him long before FOYLE’S WAR began. I so know he was quite well known — and well-regarded — in the UK.
Since beginning to work my way through the series — slowly, as I like to savor them and not gobble them all up in one gulp — I have also seen a made-for-British-TV movie he was in, ALIBI (2003). Highly recommended!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379083/
May 25th, 2010 at 2:04 pm
Anthony Horowitz who created this also wrote for POIROT and is the author of the best selling Alex Rider juvenile series and many more.
I agree about this series over all, though it does suffer a bit from a simplistic hindsight driven view of what were then more complex issues.
Frankly I can’t agree with you about wanting Foyle in charge of the world. I find the character as written to be a little unattractive — which makes the series all the better, since people with a sense of justice like his are seldom the type you would want to hang out with. I like that aspect of his character — he isn’t the nicest man in the world.
Here I think this episode would have been better served if a more balanced view of the interment issue had been pursued, one that dealt with both the real injustice and the real fears at the time. This wasn’t done out of evil intent, but fear that seemed to be justified, the results being no less evil — just as the same kind of thing is happening today to many Muslims, and simplistic answers from either side serve little point.
And frankly I just don’t buy Foyle as a policeman of his era. He is too perfectly politically correct, a forties era policeman who thinks like a 21rst century liberal ethicist. Only the fine performance by Kitchen keeps this from overpowering the other aspects of his character. I like that he isn’t always nice, I wish he wasn’t always right, or at least had to struggle a bit to get there.
For my taste the writing and the character would be more interesting if Foyle’s journey to the truth included having to overcome his own prejudices once in a while rather than his being the most left wing policeman in the history of English jurisprudence. The fact that I usually agree with him doesn’t help the problem that he isn’t a particularly honest or realistic character — a man of 21rst Century ideas set down in World War II England. Sometimes I wish he had a touch of Reginald Hill’s Andy Dalziel about him — a bit more conflict between his nature, his job, and his ideals.
I suppose that would be a different character and different series, but at least I’d believe it. Much as I enjoy these I don’t buy Foyle for a single instant as a Superintendent of Police in World War II England. He might as well be a time traveler set down in the past.
May 25th, 2010 at 2:13 pm
David
We’re parting ways here just slightly.
While I agree with all of the negative aspects you point out, I also disagree with them, in the sense that for the sake of the story, I’ve agreed in my head to ignore them. (That’s one way to avoid them, right?)
I also think that Foyle struggles with his opinions and the decisions he has to make more than you suggest, though perhaps that’s something that’s more of a wish fulfillment on my part than anything that’s in the script.
I’m nowhere near the end of the series, in terms of watching them on DVD, but from what I’ve been told (or think I’ve been told) is that this last “post-war” season of three additional episodes has gone even more deeply into controversial waters, in terms of the social and political situations as they were after the war — but looked at from a present day point of view. If so, that’s regrettable, but my opinion still holds on the earlier ones.
— Steve
May 25th, 2010 at 2:14 pm
Sorry I typed Keaton and not Kitchen. Obviously he isn’t Batman — but then neither was Keaton.
Despite my problems with the series it is a stunning performance simply because if requires him to command most of every episode. I do like that it tackles serious issues too often glossed over by nostalgia for the “simpler” war years, and as I said I appreciate that Foyle has a testy personality, but I wish he was also a tad more believable within that framework.
I think my real problem is I think this could be much better than it is with just a little more honesty about the times and the people involved in them.
May 25th, 2010 at 2:22 pm
I’ll grant it has always been a pet peeve of mine when characters in a historical setting end up mouthing ideas that are politically correct now, but unlikely to be expressed then. I like this much more than I seem to be saying, I just wish it trusted the viewer and the characters to get the point without beating us over the head with the obvious point. I just think the point would be sharper if Foyle had to struggle with his own moral view a little more, and was a little less superior about it.
May 25th, 2010 at 2:25 pm
David
Our comments #3 and 4 crossed each other.
I’ve already corrected the “Keaton” error, and I still maintain that Foyle struggles more than you are saying, with the caveat that perhaps that’s me and nothing to do with what’s really there.
— Steve
May 25th, 2010 at 2:59 pm
Steve
Thanks for the correction. And its possible we are both right. I may be too hard on him and you may be too easy. But it says something about the quality of the series that it provokes that much thought and deals with often glossed over or forgotten aspects of the war years. I think we both agree on that.
And it says something about Kitchen’s performance that he feels as real as he does.
May 25th, 2010 at 3:12 pm
David, I agree with you that Foyle tends to be an idealized embodiment of liberal feeling (I don’t mean this in the narrow modern political sense), that’s why I jokingly put Always Right in partial caps. I do think it’s a bit unrealistic that the man can be that wise and dispassionate about Everything Under the Sun, but Kitchen comes as close to pulling it off as anyone can, I would think.
At least he was shocked at first when his driver turned out to be a woman–he did show human (male) fallibility there!
I think there was some perception at the time that the internment policy was stupid in many respects, so I didn’t necessarily find this episode such a stretch. Of course what the British did (and the Americans) wasn’t comparable to what was going in Germany and Japan (and out ally the USSR). We know that, but I sometimes wonder whether younger people do these days.
Some of the issues addressed in later episodes, like homosexuality (in the air force?), may push the believability envelope for me, we’ll see. I think even a more progressive straight person in that day would have tended to view homosexuality as a tragic malady, something to be “cured.”
Interestingly, I found the second episode, “The White Feather,” somewhat weaker than the first, in that it felt more heavy-handed to me, which may chime in with what you say. The mystery plot was surprisingly well done, however. I may send in a review on this tonight. I’m still finding it quite enjoyable.
By the way, Steve, I’m mortified that I forgot to mention Edward Fox as the Assistant Commissioner in “The German Woman.” I remember seeing him when I was a kid in A Bridge to Far, then later on Gandhi, The Shooting Party and other British films. He also memorably played Sir Hugo in the 2002 film adaptation of George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda and Gudgeon, the droll butler in the 2004 Poirot film The Hollow. He’s a great acting vet.
May 25th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Have to say that I agree with Steve. Foyle as portrayed by Kitchen is a highly complex individual, with any number of inner conflicts hinted at during the course of the series. I see him as a man who has gone through plenty of struggle in arriving at both his moral and his world views; as a much more contemplative and introspective individual than might be apparent in the way he goes about his business. I don’t find him to be overly political correct, nor do I have any trouble believing him as a Detective Chief Inspector in WW II England. His attitudes are no more left wing for the time than Churchill’s.
As the above suggests, I’m a huge fan of the series. For my money, it’s the best criminous series yet to come out of England. Acting, production values, attention to period detail, stories that accurately and compassionately depict the courage, patriotism, fears, uncertainties, conflicts, and biases of the British populace in wartime — all are first-rate. The only flaws I’ve found with any of the episodes are minor and detract hardly at all from the overall quality.
May 25th, 2010 at 3:37 pm
Curt
I think we agree overall. Even when I don’t buy some of Foyle’s reactions I still enjoy the show.
I certainly agree on Edward Fox, though I used to get him confused with his brother James.
And back to FOYLE I just hate to see a series this good that doesn’t trust itself or its audience ability to handle complex ideas and emotions. Only on television are all right thinking people nice and all wrong people evil. In real life there is a good deal more in the way of shading.
The recent episode on American racial issues was a good example. The bad white Americans and good black Americans and the good English aspects were almost cartoonish compared to something like IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, and did a disservice to the real problems they were dealing with. That, and the least likely suspect solution came so far out of left field as to be a joke. And it might have had more impact if they had dealt with English racism as the Masterpiece Theater production that preceded it had. Patting yourself on the back for how enlightened you are is almost never a good strategy for drama.
But I grant I may be holding this to a higher standard than I might if it wasn’t half as good as it can be.
May 25th, 2010 at 4:07 pm
I do agree with Bill about the high quality of this series. In terms of sheer enjoyability it’s my favorite of all the British mystery series, along with the Suchet Poirots (which have been hit and miss lately).
For me Foyle is pretty clearly meant to embody classic liberal humanism. He may be idealized, but I think he’s tremendously appealing. Kitchen really is splendid in the role.
About the racism episode from the last season (“Killing Time”), I enjoyed that one too. I thought the southern U. S. army villain (named Calhoun naturally!) was not too subtle with the cigar chomping, etc. (!!), and I wondered how many U. S. army officers went threatening English citizens in the street like that (I don’t know). But I thought it had a compellingly presented story line. As for the SPOILER least likely solution, I actually saw that coming because the the major kept talking about how attractive Gabe’s girlfriend was and he was smiley and seemingly nice but oily as well. I do find myself wondering if all the murderers in the series are going to be men (it’s 5 for five so far)!
As for the good and evil archetypes, well, that’s rather classical, isn’t it? Young love is always right, isn’t it (unless it’s sneaky Agatha Christie!)? One thing that struck me about the episodes from season one that I have seen, they are highly classical in plot, even to the extent SPOILER that members of the lower class can never be the murderers (though this rule actually was broken occasionally)!
May 25th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
Re “The Killing Time” episode I thought by far the best aspect was the real concerns of the young woman about what her life would be like and the black soldier’s concern for and desire to be with his daughter once the mother was dead. That was well handled, and the bit about fishing a nice touch of humanity for the soldier and Foyle.
But the cartoonish American sergeant and the officer were poorly drawn, and even with the clue you mention and the officers speech about missing the power of his command when he went home the solution came out of the blue and didn’t arise from the drama or the characters — it reminded me of the worst kind of episodic American mystery drama where the nicest suspect is always guilty. I found the mystery element very weak in that one compared to most episodes.
Usually this series uses the classical form well. I can’t say they have fooled me yet, the crime and the criminal is usually pretty obvious, but the journey there is well handled and in most cases the killers motivation and guilt well established.
But again I’m complaining because I expect a lot from this series. If I didn’t I’d just sigh and consign it to yet another television mystery series.
May 25th, 2010 at 4:59 pm
Bill
It isn’t Foyle’s humanity I find unlikely in a policeman of the era, merely his politics, but what I do think is one of the series strongest points is that he is a man who will follow the truth even when it is inconvenient, dangerous, or threatens his own comfort or opinions. That aspect of his personality reminds me of some of the great print sleuths.
But I don’t think we can sell Winston Churchill as an icon of liberal sensibility. He was still mourning the loss of the empire in Ireland and India when he died. Winston would have had Foyle and that conscience of his posted somewhere out of the way of the practical pursuit of the goal of defeating the enemy. Even if he admired the man he would not have tolerated his personal honesty getting in the way of victory.
But there was even less tact and cant in Churchill than Foyle. When he returned as First Lord of the Admiralty an admiral famously commented to him that it would be good to have the old Naval traditions back. “Do you mean rum, sodomy, and the lash?” Churchill growled.
Now, I can hear Foyle saying that, though a bit more gently perhaps.
May 25th, 2010 at 5:12 pm
Foyle would say, “that would mean, rum, sodomy and the lash (pregnant pause)–don’t you think?”
I think the mysteries in the first two episodes of Season One were quite impressive. I suspected the right cultprits, but it was nice to see how everything was worked out. Couldn’t say that the last season had as good mysteries. The murder mystery in the first episode, The Russia House, was a minor element, with the solution handed to the detectives. Killing Time had the best plot (the theft story line especially), though I can see the complaint about the least likely person aspect. The Hide was a sort of Murder in Retrospect story that was not very hard to deduce (impaled by deer antlers–right!). The biggest mystery was Foyle’s interest in the whole thing, which was nicely resolved. I thought there was a certain question about the son’s actions, but the writer resorted to shock from the Dresden bombing (another thing the allies Did Wrong) to help explain it all, which I suppose is acceptable.
I’ve enjoyed all five episodes a good bit, plan to watch all the rest now.
May 25th, 2010 at 5:48 pm
Dave:
We agree in general on Churchill’s attitudes and character. I wasn’t trying to sell him as an icon of liberal sensibility; I made the comparison merely to rebut the out-of-character left-wing designation. Foyle wanted victory every bit as much as Winston; winning the war was certainly more important to him than the performance of his police duties, as his constant efforts to join the war effort attest. He may allow his personal beliefs and moral code to occasionally intrude in the cases he investigates — no person is ever completely consistent in his convictions or his actions, especially not in a chaotic wartime climate — but he doesn’t strike me as a man who would ever lose sight of a primary objective.
May 25th, 2010 at 5:58 pm
Curt
I’m really not in a contrary mood today, I promise, but while I will grant the popular view is Dresden was an Allied war crime the facts are otherwise. Dresden was a vital part of the German war machine because of the glass works, and their value to the German war machine. It was fire bombed because that was the method likely to destroy the glass works where they could not be restored.
It was a terrible loss of life, and FOYLE’S WAR is just borrowing from the popular view of books like Kurt Vonnegut’s SLAUGHTERHOUSE 5. But it just isn’t true. What is true is that the glass works in Dresden were being used in the war effort and to make the containers for the poison gas used in the Death Camps (not that the Allies knew that when they bombed it).
Yes it was a beautiful city and a cultural center. But Allied soldiers and innocents were dying because of what was made there, and horrible as Dresden is it doesn’t compare to the horrors the weapons that came out of Dresden caused.
I’m sorry to say that in war sometimes horror is relative. Frankly considering German war crimes if the country had been leveled to a plain of glass it would be hard to argue it was an extreme reaction.
Dresden is just another of those things everyone thinks they know that isn’t really so. The Allies have plenty to feel guilty about, but not Dresden.
I agree about this season of FOYLE’S WAR — it really had to rely on Kitchen’s performance since the stories were neither as complex nor as deep as previous efforts, though like you I appreciated when I finally learned Foyle’s motive in ‘The Hide’.
May 25th, 2010 at 6:57 pm
David, there’s a great debate ongoing over Dresden, has been for decades; and I maintain an open mind on the subject.
I’m not always sure what the right and wrong answers are on some of these issues. But if you look at my post, I wasn’t personally advancing a position on the rightness or wrongness of Dresden; I was pointing out that the film advanced the son’s distress over having experienced the Dresden bombing as a psychological explanation for his action. This seemed to me valid. Whatever you or I or Bill or Steve may think of Dresden, it did provoke outrage in some quarters even at the time (in part fueled by German exaggeration of causalities, though the smaller figures are substantial as well), and it seemed to me that the son could have reacted in the way he did. I would imagine that, whatever the strategic justification for Dresden may have been, personally experiencing a firestorm like that might have been traumatizing.
There needed to be some psychological explanation for the son’s action, i. e.,
SPOILER
deliberately getting himself condemned for treason he did not commit in order to humiliate his father, because, if he had been thinking fully rationally, would he not merely have accused his father of his mother’s murder (he was a witness to it as a child, apparently). This is what he ends up doing anyway, after a talk with Foyle.
May 25th, 2010 at 7:10 pm
Oh, I see, I may have misled with my “another thing the Allies Did Wrong” comment. I was being a bit droll here again, as when I said Foyle is Always Right.
It does seem a lot of Foyle’s War is constructed around something the British (or the United States) Got Wrong in some way! While the scriptwriter may well claim that he’s not really coming down one way or the other, I think having Foyle on your side is meant to be pretty definitive. How can Foyle Be Wrong? Like in The Russia House when he got into the argument with the pompous intelligence guy (Tim Piggott-Smith)over the matter of Russian POW expatriation. Naturally, we are going to agree with Foyle (though in this case I think I really do–though there is a legitimate question of what the USSR would have done with Allied POW’s in their hands).
Generally, the film opts for a clean moral position, when sometimes there is practical difficulty. Real life is very difficult and messy sometimes, though often people could indeed have done better.
May 25th, 2010 at 7:56 pm
David, I do think when you say that leveling all of Germany would not have been an extreme allied action, given German crimes, you definitely make clear you don’t have much common ground with Anthony Horowitz, the scripter for Foyle’s War! I just can’t go that far, though I’ll admit it’s easier to make these moral judgments sixty, seventy years later, when one is not caught up in the mix of things. Yet someone has to try to maintain some standard of civilized behavior, or what would become of the world?
I agree with you that it’s important to look at the enormities committed by the Germans and Japanese. Too much today I think we look at our own flaws and minimize those of others. School textbooks that spend several pages (with pictures) criticizing Hiroshima and Nagasaki while giving a sentence to Japanese actions at Nanking and Bataan, for example (I’ve seen these). Some kids are growing up today viewing Japan more as a victim than an aggressor, which I find absurd myself. But I do believe we should confront our own past mistakes. There was a lot wrong about internment policy in the U. S. and Britain, for example. People came to realize this at the time. It was a policy motivated more by wartime hysteria than by rational war planning. So “The German Woman” did not bother me in that respect. I’ll try to get a review done tonight of the second film, which I had more problems with, though I still quite liked it.
May 25th, 2010 at 8:12 pm
Curt
That last paragraph hits on my only real problem with the series: “generally the film opts for a clean moral position …” Sadly life doesn’t.
As you say there is debate whether Dresden was the crime it is painted as or simply another example of the horrors of the war, but Foyle always takes a straight black and white position and always that the Allies were wrong.
God knows they did enough to be ashamed about, but it might help if once in a while the series admitted that the Nazi’s were an evil and a threat unlike anything faced before. I don’t mind Foyle uncovering things the Allies would rather not mention — I appreciate it from a historical point of view for telling the untold stories — but it wouldn’t hurt if once in a while some mention was made that the odds and the enemy were both huge.
Maybe I resent Foyle’s high moral dudgeon because my father spent his youth in combat fighting an enemy FOYLE’S WAR sometimes seems to be trying to tell us was morally relativistic. I don’t think I agree with that at all. We weren’t as bad as they were, for all our flaws, for all our mistakes, we need to remind ourselves too that we were fighting as close to absolute evil as the world has known. Too often FOYLE’S WAR takes a view I just don’t agree with in that regard.
Allied hands were by no means clean — especially the Russians, but FOYLE’S WAR seems much too interested in wallowing in the Allied mistakes than facing the truth. For instance in that Russian episode they conveniently forgot to mention that some of those Russians who joined the Nazi cause committed war crimes and atrocities. The Soviets were certainly monsters, but those Russian POWS were hardly innocent anti Reds as portrayed in that episode. But FOYLE’S WAR’s ‘clean moral position’ can’t be bothered with that.
If you are going to deal with difficult truth both sides of it should be told, even in a detective story.
May 25th, 2010 at 8:39 pm
David: well, they did have Piggott-Smith character call the Russian POW’s “butchers,” but I think he was such a pompous ass in the film that the viewer’s natural reaction is to discount anything he says as self-serving (also, if I understood the implication, he tried to have Foyle actually knocked off!). And the the main Russian character fleeing the Brits was such a baby-faced, sweet innocent, you had to sympathize with that character. Although series television of this sort does tend to give us “good people” to care about/root for, so Foyle’s War is not unique in that regard.
But the mass repatriation of these people to the USSR must have resulted in some tragedies. We know how the Soviets treated political dissidents.
By the way, here’s the address of an interesting article on an Italian internee who survived the sinking of the Arandora Star (hundreds German and Italian internees were being shipped to Canada when a German U-boat, ironically enough, torpedoed the ship). He’s the only living survivor today:
http://www.se7enmagazine.org/issue/issue_10.htm
“Odyssey of a Watchmaker: the story of the Arandora Star”
My parents were both teenagers during WW2 and didn’t have too much guilt over anything done to the Axis at the time! And my mother lived in Pennsylvania Dutch country in Pennsylvania, and has about 90% German ancestry!
May 25th, 2010 at 9:35 pm
The mass repatriation was a tragedy, just not a black and white one. The Russians had some reason to behave badly to these people — not that they wouldn’t have anyway.
But as you point out the show was pretty heavy handed in its presentation — though they made a howler of a mistake based on their having read Ian Fleming. Of course Fleming knew he was making the mistake when he did it, but I doubt they did — Smersh did not operate outside of Russian territory. Any foreign mission would have been handled by the forerunner of the KGB. Smersh were little more than home grown thugs.
I lived in a largely German community in Texas as a kid, and my father wasn’t bitter or anything, but I suppose I’m sensitive to the fact he had to give up a pro baseball career he never got back as well as go through several years of hell so a series like FOYLE’s WAR can sit safely sixty years later and claim moral relativism.
I find it a phony position, and the fact that television usually brings every moral issue down to the simplest level while true is no excuse. As I said, this series and these performers could do much better and much more complex and intelligent work, but they are taking the easy way out. FOYLE’S WAR is taking serious issues and posing rather than exploring them, and everyone involved is capable of doing much better by the material and he subject. I like the show, I just think it is self satisfied, smug, and more shallow than it ought to be.
May 25th, 2010 at 9:55 pm
You really should read that Se7en article I posted a link to in my above post. The Italian guy, the last survivor of the Arandora Star tragedy (b. 1920) said he didn’t blame Churchill for British internment policy, he blamed Mussolini! He opposes the modern movement to have the British P. M. apologize (apologies are big things today).
I had two Uncles who were at Anzio, by the way. They never wanted to talk much about their war experiences. I would have liked to hear their reactions to the series.
May 26th, 2010 at 5:12 am
Curt
I will read the article. I think quite a few people who survived the war had attitudes like his. I remember recently seeing a French naval officer interviewed who said he didn’t blame the British for sinking the French fleet at the beginning of the war — he just wished he hadn’t been on one of the ships when it happened.
Save for some cranks on the far right (Pat Buchanan) and far left I think most people understand that while the Allies were certainly human and sometimes misguided, and Stalin was an evil monster by any standard of human activity, the basic Nazi threat and the war crimes they and their allies committed went far beyond the norm even for the most savage of wars.
Series like FOYLE’S WAR do a service by reminding us war is awful and human crimes are universal and not the provenance of any one race or nationality, but they also have the benefit of moral indignation without suffering the actual horrors and difficulties that accompanied the real war.
My objection then and now is simply that despite what everyone has said and despite Michael Kitchen’s fine performance, Foyle, as written, is a 21rst Century man busy judging his world from our lofty and distanced view and not a creature of his time. I think the series and we would be better served if he sometimes had to struggle with the truth ala the characters in some of Hans Helmut Kirst’s novels. At times Foyle seems to have been at war with everyone but the Germans.
I don’t mind black and white good guys and bad guys in a simple story of action and adventure — but when a series like FOYLE’S WAR tries to deal with complex issues and look at the darker side of things I think they owe us more in terms of presenting a more rounded view. It may well be that some issues are too important to present within the format of a mystery series (I hope not), but in attempting it I think FOYLE would benefit from less moral indignation and more historical perspective.
But let me praise an episode from last season. I thought the one where they investigated the murder of the German POW and the story of the wounded soldier coming home to his farm to find his wife had become close to the German assigned to help her with the farm work was both a good mystery and an outstanding portrait of real people in real situations. But this season I found uniformly shrill and frankly beneath the standard of the series and the quality of what went before. I guess the war took its toll on Foyle too.
May 27th, 2010 at 5:23 am
I sent Steve reviews of the next two episodes from series 1, so you can see more of my thought then, if you are interested. I agree one can detect a certain ideological slant in the films (they seem pretty hostile to aristocracy/privilege, to the an extent that they seem to me to slight the contribution of the upper class to the war effort, which was considerable, both in terms of personal service and the requisitioning of great houses, many of which were effectively wrecked over the war years). But they have amazingly good plots for films not relying directly on Golden Age sources and they are very well shot and acted, with some excellent character portraits. I’m enjoying them quite a bit.
I liked the last season, though I thought the conspiratorial aspect of the Russia House went over-the-top, the racism theme in Killing Time sometimes heavyhanded, and The Hide somewhat disappointing is its resort to the awful, conservative, male aristocrat villain theme again. There was still much that was compelling, however. The Hide especially was moving to me, in its final revelations.
I like Foyle, and I do think he would make wonderful benevolent dictator; but I’m being a bit tongue in cheek here, really, because I don’t think anyone can be that morally keen all the time. And, it’s true, as you say, that sometimes the “moral” choice may not be the correct one–on utilitarian grounds, for example.
May 28th, 2010 at 7:42 pm
[…] story was not as compelling as that in the first episode, “The German Woman” (reviewed here ). There are actually two mysteries in the film, who murdered the inn owner and the whereabouts of […]
January 12th, 2021 at 7:06 am
Bring back Foyle.