A secret British aviation project is being disrupted by a foreign power. Agent Charles Hammond (Ralph Richardson), is assigned the case. What follows is an espionage thriller that refuses to take itself seriously. Yet strangely, this odd mixture of screwball comedy and political potboiler actually works.
"Q Planes" (released in the U. S. as "Clouds Over Europe") was directed by an American, Tim Whelan. He establishes an anarchic tone throughout. He satirizes what his contemporaries considered too serious to examine lightly. In the story, British experimental aircraft are being "electronically" hijacked right out of the sky. The culprits' nationality is never identified, but you can guess their origin as soon as they speak their lines in that thick Teutonic accent.
The dialogue, much of it written and improvised by Richardson and his co-star Laurence Olivier, is crackling and smart. The action, though wildly improbable, is as unreal and stylized as the characters. The joker in the deck is Hammond himself. He boasts of his own considerable skills as a solver of crimes, crossword puzzles, and lovers' squabbles. Despite such brashness, Hammond is never tedious. Richardson plays him as an eccentric of many shades - horse-racing addict, amateur master chef, verbal wit extraordinaire, constant belittler of his valet (Gus McNaughton), and a man whose obsession with his case causes him to repeatedly ignore his beloved Daphne (Sandra Storme), the single character who bests Hammond in the film's fittingly ironic conclusion.
Hammond is aided on the case by his intrepid sister-reporter, Kay (Valerie Hobson), and a temperamental test-pilot, Tony McVane (Laurence Olivier), whom Kay picks up while snooping around an aircraft factory. Kay's character, a caricature of the working English suffragette, holds her own when competing with her two male cohorts - McVane, who hates reporters no matter their gender and Hammond, the egoist-as-detective ("I'm right - and the whole world is wrong!"). As if any enemy country could measure up against single representatives of MI-5, Fleet Street, and the RAF.
