Lili Palmer freedom fighter

[stuart.uk]

Spoiler

I watched Cloak And Dagger for the first time today, where Lilli Palmer, who plays a spy helping Gary Cooper get a scientist out of Italy. Lili was very impressive as the young action heroine she potrayed in the film. I was reminded of other films where Lili did her bit for freedom.

In The Gentle Sex she played I think a French girl who felt her Country to the UK where she joined the ATS and became an ambulance driver. In the film she also made a powerful propaganda speech, not unlike Charlie Chaplin at the end of The Great Dictator.

In Conspiracy Of Hearts she plays a leader of nuns, who help allied soldiers escape out of ememy lines back to safety

In Operation Crossbow she again played a spy, who kills innocent Sophia Loren in case she talks out of place to the wrong person about George Peppard posing as her husband

In Sebastian, she sacrifices her career as a senior code breaking Civil Servant by leaking information to a left wing Labour MP

In the tv series The Zoo Gang, she plays a war time spy, who in the 70s comes out of retirement along with John Mills, Brian Keith and Barry Morse to solve modern day crimes

In The Boys From Brazil she helps Laurence Olivier track down Nazi war criminals

[moira finnie]

Lili Palmer is one of the few actresses who makes me believe she has an internal life, filled with thoughts and feelings that may go unexpressed in the often underwritten roles she played in American movies (I've only seen a few of her English movies and none of her German films). The lady also had a deft gift for comedy, as well as drama, as My Girl Tisa (1948) and The Four Poster (1952) both proved. Unfortunately, neither of these movies appears to be broadcast much (though I think that the latter movie did appear on TCM sometime in the last ten years).

If you like Lili Palmer, freedom fighter, I hope you have a chance to see the fact-based The Counterfeit Traitor (1962). Under the direction of the overlooked George Seaton, Palmer plays a German woman with a nuanced understanding that her life in WWII Europe is a series of ethical choices--and she steals the movie from everyone else, including the star William Holden (who's excellent as a rather cynical man of equivocal loyalties who is compelled to help the Allies).

The film is on youtube, beginning below:

[youtube][/youtube]