Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 1942

The Contenders:

One of Our Aircraft is Missing
Road to Morocco
Wake Island
The War against Mrs. Hadley
Woman of the Year (winner)

One of Our Aircraft is Missing

Format: DVD from Coal City Public Library through interlibrary loan on laptop.

I’ve mentioned before that when I was a kid, war films were my go-to genre. I wasn’t specific enough. I specifically loved films about World War II. There’s a little part of me that gets excited when I encounter a film of the period that I haven’t seen before. Such was the case with One of Our Aircraft is Missing. I hadn’t heard of this before I made my current Oscar list, and it didn’t take me too long to request it from the library. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the film. Truth be told, I expected this to be something like a police procedural, albeit a military one. You know, missing aircraft, investigation of what happened…

But that’s not it. Instead, we have a bomber crew of a plane known as “B for Bertie” shot down on a bombing raid over Holland. The crew bails out and five of the six men land close enough to each other to make a small unit, with hopes of finding the sixth man. They are eventually found by people from the local Dutch village and are brought back to meet Else Meertens (Pamela Brown), the local schoolteacher and an English speaker. After a few tense moments, the Dutch citizens pledge to help the English. They do this by disguising them in Dutch clothing and smuggling them through the town.