Hanover Street

Gung-ho American World War II bomber pilot falls for an already married English rose during teatime rendezvous in war-torn Hanover Street. Presumably the fragile 'brief encounters' of war had some immediate poignancy for the audiences of that period; here, though, tricked out with all sorts of 'modern' intrusions (bed scenes, Catch-22 aircrew) and saddled with dialogue of quite staggering banality, they merely straggle into the wayward irrelevancies of his creeping cowardice and her increasing guilt. The second half ignores the obvious irony of husband and lover circumstantially trapped on the same suicide mission, settling instead for heroics of the 'Tell her I died a brave man' variety. Anaemic and foolish. CPea.