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Directed : Unknown
Written : Unknown
Stars : Unknown
All cast & crew
Genres : Comedy Family Sport
Release date : Dec 25, 1953
Countries of origin : United Kingdom
An upper-class corporal from Paris is captured by the Germans when they invade France in 1940. Assisted and accompanied by characters as diverse as a morose dairy farmer, a waiter, a myopic intellectual, a working-class Parisian, and a German dental assistant, the corporal tries to escape from prison camps, sometimes making it a few yards, sometimes reaching the French border.
Four privates romp their way through occupied Japan while on leave, finding a little romance and some laughs. After it's over they head to the front lines of the Korean War where brutality and death are constant.
During World War II, all the studios put out "all-star" vehicles which featured virtually every star on the lot--often playing themselves--in musical numbers and comedy skits, and were meant as morale-boosters to both the troops overseas and the civilians at home. This was Universal Pictures' effort. It features everyone from Donald O'Connor to the Andrews Sisters to Orson Welles to W.C. Fields to George Raft to Marlene Dietrich, and dozens of other Universal players.
A somewhat happy-go-lucky bunch of Brits in a German POW camp find their new acerbic fellow prisoner is a key officer who must be got out at all cost.
In London, during October 1993, England is playing Holland in the preliminaries of the World Cup. The Bosnian War is at its height, and refugees from the ex-Yugoslavia are arriving. Football rivals, and political adversaries from the Balkans all precipitate conflict and amusing situations. Meanwhile, the lives of four English families are affected in different ways by encounter with the refugees; one of the families improbably becomes involved with a Balkan refugee through the England vs. Holland match.
A naive French country girl in London helps the war effort by parachuting into German-occupied France to help kidnap an important German general. She bungles through a heroic adventure of plot and counter-plot.