Operation Mincemeat: the startling story of deception that fooled Hitler and helped win the war
Emma John
Sat 9 Apr 2022 10.00 EDT
In a small subterranean office at the Admiralty, a cluster of men and women wait in a state of agonising anticipation. The Allied forces are landing in Sicily, and this small group of intelligence operatives has just bet the invasion – tens of thousands of lives – on a prankish piece of spycraft involving the body of a homeless man dressed as a pilot, carrying false news of an attack on Greece. It’s a second world war legend whose real story is no less strange than the myth that surrounds it – and something about it has clearly caught the zeitgeist.
On Tuesday a new British film revisits the story of one of the greatest single deceptions in warfare, with an all-star cast and an Oscar winner at the helm. Directed by John Madden, of Shakespeare in Love fame, Operation Mincemeat stars Colin Firth as Ewen Montagu, the former King’s Counsel who oversaw the extraordinary plan, alongside an ensemble of some of the nation’s best-loved actors, from Penelope Wilton and Simon Russell Beale to Jason Isaacs and Kelly Macdonald.
At the end of the month, meanwhile, a very different take will be seen on the banks of the Thames, at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith. SpitLip’s Operation Mincemeat may share the same title as the movie, but it certainly doesn’t share the same approach, or a budget that can stretch to submarines packed with extras. In their comedy musical, which began life on the fringe, all the parts are played by the five-strong company, with gender-swapped roles and songs that include a Beyoncé tribute in the MI5 typing pool and a creepy pathologist channelling Cabaret.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/apr/09/operation-mincemeat-war-story-allies-deception-film-play
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