starry night
Kelly MacDonald lights up the red carpet as she joins Colin Firth at star-studded Operation Mincemeat premiere
KELLY MacDonald and Colin Firth led the stars at the premiere of their new film Operation Mincemeat this evening.
The talented actors were greeted by hundreds of fans as they walked a blue carpet at the Curzon Mayfair in London.
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The Second World War film, which is based on the book of the same name by Ben Macintyre, tells the story of the British plan to camouflage the invasion of Sicily in 1943 by persuading the Germans that it would instead invade Greece.
Kelly, who lit up the premiere in a black dress, plays Jean Leslie in the film, while Colin takes on the role of Ewen Montagu – who led the operation.
The film also stars Jason Isaacs as John Godfrey, Penelope Wilton as Hester Leggett, Simon Russell Beale as Winston Churchill and Johnny Flynn as Ian Fleming.
Other stars attending the premiere included Claudia Winkleman, Jimmy Carr and Margaret Clunie.
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Filming initially took place in 2019 between London and Spain, with the final scene shot in Malaga in 2021.
Directed by John Madden, it first premiered at the 2021 British Film Festival in Australia.
Operation Mincemeat originated in the mind of Ian Fleming, the creator of Bond, who worked in naval intelligence during the war.
The plan was to find a dead body, equip it with false papers and leave it in a place where the Germans would find it.
The most obvious place was Spain, which was teeming with Nazi sympathisers. If the body and fake documents could be made to fall into the right hands, they would certainly be passed to the Germans.
The challenge for British intelligence was how to convince Hitler that the Allies did not intend to attack Sicily — when in fact they did.
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The two architects of Operation Mincemeat were lawyer Ewen Montagu of Navy intelligence ( played by Colin Firth ) and an RAF officer working for MI5, Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew Macfadyen).
The bluff represented a serious gamble. If the Germans realised they were being deceived, then instead of reducing troop numbers in Sicily, they would bolster them, with bloody consequences.
Amazingly, Hitler was convinced by the deception. As they picked up the messages revealing the Nazis had fallen for it, MI5 sent a coded message to Churchill: “Mincemeat swallowed whole.”
The results were extraordinary. The First German Panzer Division of tanks was moved to Greece from France to defend against the expected landing.
German minefields were laid off Greece. An entire group of torpedo boats was redeployed from Sicily to the Aegean, and two more Panzer divisions were moved from Russia to Greece just as they were most needed in the battle at Kursk, 280 miles from Moscow.
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