Uncensored | |
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![]() Theatrical release poster | |
Directed by | Anthony Asquith |
Written by | Rodney Ackland Terence Rattigan Wolfgang Wilhelm |
Based on | Uncensored by Oscar Millard |
Produced by | Edward Black Maurice Ostrer |
Starring | Eric Portman Phyllis Calvert Griffith Jones |
Cinematography | Arthur Crabtree |
Edited by | R. E. Dearing |
Music by | Louis Levy Hans May |
Production company | |
Distributed by | General Film Distributors |
Release date | 24 August 1942 |
Running time | 108 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Uncensored is a 1942 British war drama film directed by Anthony Asquith starring Eric Portman, Phyllis Calvert and Griffith Jones. The film was produced at Gainsborough Pictures by Edward Black, with cinematography from Arthur Crabtree and screenplay by Rodney Ackland, Wolfgang Wilhelm and Terence Rattigan based on the 1937 novel of the same title by Oscar Millard. The film was shot at the company's Lime Grove Studios in Shepherd's Bush, with sets designed by the art director Alex Vetchinsky.
Uncensored is set in occupied Belgium and shares the propagandistic tone of many British films of its era. While its reception was mainly positive, it was criticised in some quarters for its unrealistic portrayal of the occupying German forces as bungling, incompetent and easily outwitted buffoons. [1]
On its original UK release Uncensored ran for 108 minutes; for overseas distribution however it was trimmed to 83 minutes and the cut version subsequently became more widely circulated.
Before the Nazi occupation of Belgium, Brussels nightclub owner André Delange (Portman) used to publish an anti-Nazi newspaper called La Libre Belgique (Free Belgium) which was distributed secretly. In the aftermath of the German occupation, his underground colleagues in the Belgian resistance suggest reviving the newspaper, to which Delange agrees. With the help of his chief assistant Julie Lanvin (Calvert) and a small band of helpers, La Libre Belgique once more begins to circulate. When the Germans find out of its existence, they offer a reward to anyone who is prepared to identify those responsible for its publication.
Delange's business partner Charles Neels (Peter Glenville), disgruntled with their business relationship and jealous of Delange's relationship with the attractive Julie, betrays the whereabouts of the newspaper's makeshift office. The premises are raided and those present in the building arrested, but Delange and Julie manage to avoid capture. The Germans announce to the populace that La Libre Belgique is no more and its perpetrators are in custody; however Delange and Julie succeed in printing and distributing another edition, making the Germans look foolish and leading them to assume that the information given to them by their informant was false. They release those arrested, who they now believe not to be the people they were looking for, and vow to continue searching for the real culprits. Meanwhile the group led by Delange comes together again, and their work continues.
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Eric Harold Portman was an English stage and film actor. He is probably best remembered for his roles in several films for Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger during the 1940s.
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The Independent Front was a left-wing faction of the Belgian Resistance in German-occupied Belgium in World War II. It was founded in March 1941 by Dr Albert Marteaux of the Communist Party of Belgium, Father André Roland, and Fernand Demany, another communist. The aim of the organisation was to unite Belgian resistance groups of all opinions and political leanings; nonetheless the only political party that was affiliated as such was the Communist Party. The FI operated a significant propaganda, social and paramilitary organization, in addition to its military and sabotage functions and operated in competition with the larger pro-government Secret Army.
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The National Royalist Movement was a group within the Belgian Resistance in German-occupied Belgium during World War II. It was active chiefly in Brussels and Flanders and was the most politically right-wing of the major Belgian resistance groups.
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Paul Victor Antoine Struye was a Belgian lawyer, politician, and journalist, notable for his writings during World War II. A native of Ghent, Struye served in the Belgian Army during World War I. He qualified as a lawyer in the years after the war and also worked as a journalist at the Catholic newspaper La Libre Belgique. A royalist and patriot, Struye was soon attracted to the Belgian resistance during World War II and was influential once La Libre Belgique became an underground newspaper. His diary of life under occupation and writings on public opinion are important historical sources on the period. After the war, Struye entered politics in the Christian Social Party as a senator and held the portfolio of Minister of Justice (1947-1948). He subsequently held the post of President of the Senate on two occasions.
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The Committee of Secretaries-General was a committee of senior civil servants and technocrats in German-occupied Belgium during World War II. It was formed shortly before the occupation to oversee the continued functioning of the civil service and state bureaucracy independently of the German military occupation administration.
The German occupation of Belgium during World War II began on 28 May 1940, when the Belgian army surrendered to German forces, and lasted until Belgium's liberation by the Western Allies between September 1944 and February 1945. It was the second time in less than thirty years that Germany had occupied Belgium.
The Strike of the 100,000 was an 8-day strike in German-occupied Belgium which took place from 10–18 May 1941. It was led by Julien Lahaut, head of the Belgian Communist Party, even though the Nazi—Soviet Pact was still in force. The object of the strike was to demand a wage increase though it was also an act of passive resistance to the German occupation.
The German occupation of Belgium of World War I was a military occupation of Belgium by the forces of the German Empire between 1914 and 1918. Beginning in August 1914 with the invasion of neutral Belgium, the country was almost completely overrun by German troops before the winter of the same year as the Allied forces withdrew westwards. The Belgian government went into exile, while King Albert I and the Belgian Army continued to fight on a section of the Western Front. Under the German military, Belgium was divided into three separate administrative zones. The majority of the country fell within the General Government, a formal occupation administration ruled by a German general, while the others, closer to the front line, came under more repressive direct military rule.
Various kinds of clandestine media emerged under German occupation during World War II. By 1942, Nazi Germany occupied much of continental Europe. The widespread German occupation saw the fall of public media systems in France, Belgium, Poland, Norway, Czechoslovakia, Northern Greece, and the Netherlands. All press systems were put under the ultimate control of Joseph Goebbels, the German Minister of Propaganda.
The clandestine press of the French Resistance was collectively responsible for printing flyers, broadsheets, newspapers, and even books in secret in France during the German occupation of France in the Second World War. The secret press was used to disseminate the ideas of the French Resistance in cooperation with the Free French, and played an important role in the liberation of France and in the history of French journalism, particularly during the 1944 Freedom of the Press Ordinances.
A roundup is a police operation of interpellation and arrest of people taken at random from a public place, or targeting a particular population by ethnicity, appearance, or other perceived membership in a targeted group. To ensure operational success, organizers rely on the element of surprise in order to reduce the risk of evasion as much as possible. When the operation involves large numbers of individuals not targeted for any perceived group membership, it may be called a mass arrest.
Uncensored is a 1937 novel by British writer Oscar Millard. It takes place during the German occupation of Belgium in the First World War. It was inspired by the real-life underground newspaper La Libre Belgique run by the country's resistance movement.