The old saying if you're going to steal, steal from the best rings true in this case which is essentially In Which We Serve in khaki; both feature men in confined spaces reminiscing about their lives in Civvy Street with the main difference being that instead of a lifeboat we have a prison camp where a similar cross-section of Upper, Middle and Working Classes learn to rub along more or less amicably. For good measure they even ripped off the celebrated scene from Casablanca where the German singing is drowned out by 1) the Marseillaise and 2) Roll Out The Barrel, but the most blatant rip-off from the Coward masterpiece is in the two married couples, respectively Bernand Miles/ Joyce Carey/ John Mills/Kay Walsh and Jack Warner/Gladys Henson/Mervyn Johns/Rachel Thomas, who were friends before the war so much so that the two wives move in together for the duration; in each film one wife is killed and the news is broken to the widower via a letter from home to the other man so here Jack Warner gets to tell Mervyn Johns that Rachel Thomas is dead. This to one side The Captive Heart remains a compelling film because at its heart (sorry about that) is the wonderfully low-key love story between Michael Redgrave and his real-life wife Rachel Kempson of which 95 per cent is played out via under-stated letters which only mention love between the lines. The support is largely sound and trivia buffs will be interested to note that two years earlier (1944) Meriel Forbes had married Ralph Richardson so that the film boasted the real-life wives of two future theatrical knights. One to buy on DVD.
Review of The Captive Heart
