Hanover Street (1979)
Hanover Street (1979), written and directed by Peter Hyams.
An American bomber pilot falls in love with a married English woman. By extreme coincidence her husband is a spymaster who will be going on the next mission...
This is not a well-liked film. Critics found it cliche-ridden and audiences didn't respond well to the combination of women's romance picture and behind-the-lines action story.
Its good features:
Harrison Ford, Lesley-Anne Down and Christopher Plummer are all attractive in their love triangle.
Photographed by David Watkin (Help! (1965), The Boy Friend (1971), Chariots of Fire (1981)).
Score by John Barry, although it is his most romantically drippy.
Aviation photography with period bombers.
The problems:
It really is two movies stapled together. Lesley-Anne Down has nothing to do in the second half but wait forlornly for her men to come back.
The bombers are realistic but the espionage plot is about as plausible as The Dirty Dozen (1967).
Harrison Ford's dopey love-sick clowning is painful. His hair is too long.
They try to recapture the snappy patter of the bomber crew from period films, but it just doesn't work.
It is true about the cliches.
I recall George MacDonald Fraser's account of the filming of Force 10 from Navarone (1978) where he said that some actors just cannot stand like soldiers. They even tried weighting his cuffs with coins to get his trousers to hang right. He doesn't give a name but I suspect he was talking about Harrison Ford.
Available on DVD.
