A neat example of the brisk storytelling of writer Frances Durbridge – a British crime eminence in 1953 – Operation Diplomat is also a prime example of the skilful directing of John Guillermin, who tells that story at speed. He’d later go on to direct successes like The Towering Inferno and 1978’s Death on the Nile, where an ability to keep the story moving while giving each of a vast array of stars their moment in the spotlight would turn out to be vital.
Here, Guillermin is in the British B-movie phase of his career. And though he doesn’t have to corral herds of actors and swing his cameras around exotic locations and impressive sets, he’s already showing he has what it takes with a cast of maybe half a dozen key players and a story that’s all Maguffin and no real plot. Typical Durbridge.
The action starts with cadaverous Doctor Fenton (Guy Rolfe) being waylaid on his way home and whisked off to a mystery location where he is asked to perform an operation on a dying man. The patient’s life saved, Fenton is whisked back to London in the same blacked-out ambulance, only to realise shortly afterwards that the mystery man is a British muckety-muck who’s meant to be in Berlin but has clearly been kidnapped.
As people associated with the life-saving operation start dying, a mysterious but clearly involved woman called Lisa appears on the scene – fate’s hand at work – as does Inspector Austin (Ballard Berkeley), an affable but suspicious and cynical cop reasonably convinced that Dr Fenton is a murderer.
To clear his name… etc etc. This he does by teaming up with a pretty nurse, Sister Rogers (Patricia Dainton), and together the two of them, always one step ahead of flatfooted plod, set out to crack the case.
The Fenton/Rogers relationship appears to be modelled on that of Durbridge’s most famous characters, amateur detective and professional toff Paul Temple and Steve, his wife, right hand woman and useful explicatory device. Fenton does the business, Rogers explains what he’s just done.
The film was spun out from a primetime TV show of the same name, which followed on from Durbridge’s numerous successes on the radio (where Temple, Steve and co had been crowd-pleasing fixtures since 1938), not to mention the many novels, plus, later, numerous TV series, almost all of them firmly in the Operation Diplomat mould.
Durbridge seems quaintly old fashioned these days but the stories rattle along nicely and his characterisation is good. It’s a good cast too – Rolfe as the affable man about town, Lisa Daniely as the doe-eyed mysterious Lisa, Dainton as the perky and pretty Sister Rogers, Sydney Tafler, as Wade, a bruiser with old world manners, and Berkeley (remembered mostly these days as the Major in the classic 1970s comedy Fawlty Towers), twinkling away furiously as the suspicious copper.
Watching Guillermin’s direction is fascinating and it’s clear how tightly he is choreographing everything – so many marks to be hit with actors regularly walking into focus/frame, or the camera doing the work for them while they stay still. Durbridge’s jigsaw plotting matches Guillermin’s jigsaw directing style, you could say – probably a bit of a stretch, but extreme competence is clearly on display here.
It is all a touch breathless, but that’s what you get when you telescope six 30-minute TV episodes into a film lasting only 70 minutes. But somehow there’s time for a rooftop chase with gunfire, plus atmospheric scene-setting shots of a London visibly still recovering from the Second World War. Good story, well told. Just ignore the usual Durbridge improbabilities and you should enjoy it.
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
