When I decided the theme of this month would be British Cinema, I had no idea I’d wind up watching so many World War II films. It makes perfect sense that the British film industry would make a lot of these types of films as it was an extremely important part of their history. They lived through it. They were there from the beginning. I just didn’t realize I’d enjoy them so much.

What I’m loving is how different British war films are from their American counterparts. As Americans, I think we tend to believe the war started with the bombing of Pearl Harbor in the South Pacific and D-Day on the European front. That’s nonsense of course, but we Americans are a selfish lot and we care about things only when they affect us. Or at least our movies tend to focus on the war efforts directly involving Americans. They also tend to be more action-oriented, more about actual warfare than the behind-the-scenes things.

British films are often about spies and more personal battles on the home front. Americans sent soldiers across the great seas to fight, England was right there, close to the front lines from the beginning. They were being bombed right at home.

I’m digressing, I’m also way behind on writing about all the British films I’ve been watching. The thing is I’ve wound up watching a lot of World War II-era films, and I wanted to think about why that was, and also warn you all that more reviews along the same lines are coming.

So, Against the Wind is a spy film set (obviously) during World War II. It takes a nuts-and-bolts approach to spycraft (something else I love about these British war films is how they tend to approach things like war and spying, life and death, in such a practical, no-nonsense way).

We spend time in Belgium with our characters as they are trained to be spies and then follow a few of them into enemy territory as they work to complete their mission.

This is the point where I admit that I watched this film a couple of weeks ago, that I’ve watched a dozen films since then – several of which were British spy films – and that I no longer really remember the details of this one.

It stars Robert Beatty as a Catholic Priest turned spy, Simone Signoret in her first English language film, and the always reliable Jack Warner. It is also very good with some terrifically taut scenes.