Q Planes (1939)

Directors:

Tim Whelan
Arthur B. Woods

Writers:

Brock Williams (story) &
Jack Whittingham (story) ...

Release Date:

20 June 1939 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama | Mystery | Thriller | War

Plot:

Lighthearted romp of a pre-war spy story: quirky British secret service man finds out who's using a secret weapon to steal experimental planes.

Plot Keywords:

Spy | Ship | British Secret Service | Screwball Comedy | Ray Gun

Cast

  (Complete credited cast)

Laurence Olivier	...	Tony McVane
Ralph Richardson	...	Maj. Charles Hammond
Valerie Hobson	...	Kay Lawrence
George Curzon	...	Jenkins
George Merritt	...	Mr. Barrett
Gus McNaughton	...	Blenkinsop, Hammond's Butler
David Tree	...	R. Mackenzie
Sandra Storme	...	Daphne
Hay Petrie	...	Stage Door Keeper
Frank Fox	...	Karl
George Butler	...	Air Marshal Gosport
Gordon McLeod	...	The Baron
John Longden	...	John Peters, a Pilot (as John Longdon)

Also Known As:

Clouds Over Europe (USA)

Runtime:

82 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Mirrophonic Recording)

Certification:

UK:U | USA:Approved

Filming Locations:

Denham Studios, Denham, Buckinghamshire, England, UK

Company:

Irving Asher Productions

Trivia:

The destroyer sent to intercept the SS Viking is the HMS Echo (H23). This was one of 9 E class destroyers of the Royal Navy. She was launched in 1934. During the Second World War she sank a U boat in 1943 and was transferred to the Greek Navy in 1944.

Quotes:

Mr. Barrett: Alright! Alright! Will you as a personal favour take that plane up?
Tony McVane: Well of course I will, you parboiled, pudding-minded, myopic deadhead!

Politics of the Eccentric

A secret British aviation project is being disrupted by a foreign power, until an effete but supremely confident military-intelligence agent, Charles Hammond, is assigned the case. What follows is a tense espionage thriller that refuses to take itself seriously. Yet strangely, this odd mixture of screwball comedy and political-thriller works.

"Q Planes" (released in America as "Clouds Over Europe") was directed by an American, Tim Whelan, who establishes a near-anarchic tone throughout. Here, he kids the pants off of what other late-1930's filmmakers may have considered too serious a subject to examine lightly: a potentially disastrous affair for King and country, wherein experimental aircraft are being "electronically" hijacked right out of the sky and docked within the confines of a large ship from a hostile nation. (The culprits' nationality is never identified, but as soon as they speak their lines in that thick Teutonic accent, we can just about guess their origin.)

The dialogue, much of it written and improvised by the actors themselves, is crackling, smart; and the action, while wildly improbable and clumsily staged, is as unreal and stylized as the characters. The joker in the deck is Hammond himself. As portrayed by Ralph Richardson, he boasts to anyone who will listen of his own considerable skills as a solver of crimes, a solver of crossword puzzles, and a solver of lovers' squabbles. Despite such brash self-assurance, however, Hammond is never tedious. Richardson plays him as an eccentric of many shades and interests – horse-racing addict, amateur master chef, verbal wit extraordinaire, constant belittler of his "gentleman's gentleman" (Gus McNaughton), and a man whose obsession with the intrigue of his case causes him to repeatedly ignore his beloved Daphne (the lovely Sandra Storme), the single character who bests Hammond in the film's fittingly ironic conclusion. With his ever-present walking-cane and stylish attire, the abstract but charming Hammond may have been an early influence on the creation of that impossibly perfect spy, John Steed, in TV's equally stylish "The Avengers."

Hammond is aided on the case by his intrepid sister-reporter, Kay (Valerie Hobson), and a temperamental test-pilot, Tony McVane (Laurence Olivier), whom Kay picks up while snooping around an aircraft factory. Kay's character may have been intended as a caricature of the "liberated" working English suffragette. But she holds her own when competing with her two male cohorts - McVane, who hates reporters and let's rip whenever he hears mention of Kay's profession, and Hammond, the charismatic, ardent egoist-as-detective. "I'm right!" he proclaims to his doubting superiors. "I'm right - and the whole world is wrong!" Naturally, Hammond's irregular method of sleuthing bears out his claim – as if any enemy country could measure up in a contest against single representatives of MI-5, Fleet Street, and the RAF.