Operation Amsterdam

The film has to be very fast, apart from the prologue it takes place in a single day, just before the Germans reach Amsterdam.

The city’s industrial diamonds must be removed, for safekeeping.

An absolutely perfect masterpiece, as it had to be, flawless.

Time Out Film Guide almost got the point, but complained of “characterisation” wanting in the two Dutch diamond merchants and the British intelligence major sent in quite on the fly by Royal Navy destroyer over the weekend of the invasion, and the girl they meet, who works in the Dutch War Ministry.

Howard Thompson, full of foolery as ever, thought it was all “pretty silly” in the end (New York Times).

“Well mounted and played,” Halliwell’s Film Guide observes like the driest of all martinis.