The Foreman Went to France (aka 'Somewhere in France') (1942) DVD B&W Shown in original aspect ratio Approx. 81 min. Playable in North America (the US, Canada, Mexico, etc.)
Starring: Clifford Evans, Tommy Trinder, Constance Cummings, Robert Morley, Gordon Jackson, Ernest Milton. Written by Leslie Arliss, John Dighton and Angus MacPhail. Directed by Charles Frend.
'The Foreman Went to France' (1942), after his bosses have sold three machines for making fighter cannons to a French company, an English factory foreman (Clifford Evans) travels to France in 1940 to engineer the smuggling of the vital machinery out of the country before the invading Germans can get their hands on it. While in France he meets two British soldiers (Tommy Trinder and Gordon Jackson) who agree to help him as it soon becomes a race against time.
'The Foreman Went to France' was based on the real-life wartime exploits of Welsh engineer and munitions worker Melbourne Johns, who rescued machinery used to make guns for Spitfires and Hurricanes. It was an Ealing Studios film made in 1941 with the support of the War Office and the Free French Forces. All of the 'heroes' are portrayed as ordinary people caught up in the war. An Ealing treasure!
Filmed during the war, location shooting for the scenes set in France was done in Cornwall, Kent, and Berkshire. Filming took 12 months as it was continually interrupted by blitzes.
“An Englishman with no passport, but a mission that will take your breath away when you hear it!”