The main action
occurs in September, 1944. A mission briefing of the 465th Bomber
Wing is dated July 7th, and lays out a daily repeated milk run
against rail yards. The CO’s plane is shot down over Rouen, the crew bail
out, he is wounded and rescued by the Maquis, who hide him at a farmhouse.
Lt. Hanley is
assigned to get him. He takes three men, a maquisard smuggles them
cross-country. There is a traitor in the organization.
The farmer and his
wife have a niece, she has betrayed Maquis operations all around to keep the
flier safe. She’s left behind to be dealt with later.
A secondary
theme compresses the drama. One of the crewmen is shot and killed in civvies at
night by Pvt. Fergus of the platoon, who is himself mortally wounded at a
German checkpoint and dies in the farmhouse.
Lt. Robin Crusoe,
U.S.N.
He is a Navy pilot who bails out in the Pacific and
makes his home on an island while waiting for rescue. Wednesday is a beautiful native
girl, her father Tanamashu operates the stone effigy of a god that maintains
discipline and prevents such a marriage.
This is signed as the only film of television
director Paul (Ben Casey, My Favorite Martian), but it might just
as well be regarded as an exemplar of Disney’s cinema, the fruits of long
study and patient accomplishment. It is balanced, if that is the word, or
better pitched amidst surrealism, poetry and a modesty that would belie its
devotion and brilliance if it weren’t the stuff they were made on.