Someday We’ll Meet Again In Sunnier Times- Leslie Bank’s Cottage To Let

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Cottage To Let, starring Leslie Banks, Alistair Sims, John Mills, 1941 

No question the Nazi advances on Europe and England during the late 1930s and onward provoked many dreams of far off sunnier days as again the men, mainly, went off to war again for the second time in a generation, and the womenfolk were left behind to fret and help do war preparation work wishing to high heaven that they would indeed meet again some sunnier day as the old Vera Lynn standard had it. And those sunnier days, as this year’s commemoration ceremonies of the Allied victories over the Nazis and their followers, including trained spies and fifth columnists, did come. But it was a near thing as the Nazis tried to move might and main to even up the score in areas where they were deficient. Those attempts to short-cut their way to victory by espionage and fifth columnist work is the subject of the somewhat tongue in cheek and stiff upper lip film under review Cottage To Let.

Here is how the thing played out. Barrington (played by an eccentric Leslie Bank) a great inventor of militarily useful gadgets who insisted on working at home on his Scottish estate had some of his inventions copied, copied quickly by the Nazis. That raised a “red flag” in English military intelligence circles, especially when they got wind that the Germans had sent a spy in to do some nefarious work. That spy (played by John Mills) posing as a wounded English fly boy Lieutenant Perry had a mission to grab Barrington and scoot him out to Berlin or some such cozy place.

But of course a British war film in released in 1941 is not going to let any nasty Nazis take away one of England’s own and so military intelligence sends in a counter-spy Dimble (played simpleton smart by Alastair Sims) to foil their plans. Perry does grab Barrington but by Dimble’s nifty infiltration work they find out where Barrington is being hidden and the gig was up. Impostor Perry in the end went to his just rewards. And that was one little step to those sunnier days Ms. Lynn sang about. The plot line has been done before, and since, and the antics were a little over the top for such a serious subject so it is hard to recommend anybody seeing this one except to see how the British made such films work for the war efforts in those benighted days.