GARBO THE SPY
Spy Vibers will want to check out the documentary film, Garbo the Spy, which is currently on a limited theatrical run. Exclusive bay area screenings at the San Rafael Film Center. "British intelligence named him Garbo because they considered him 'the greatest actor in the world.' The Nazis called him Alaric, after the Visigoth who sacked Rome. The most remarkable double-agent of the Second World War perpetrated its greatest fraud, fooling the German High Command into believing that the Normandy landings were a diversionary trick, thereby buying the Allies precious time and saving many thousands of lives and probably the world... Yet Nazi Germany would continue to think him a hero! Unfolding like a compulsive page-turner, this terrific documentary proves that truth is much stranger than fiction, recounting the story of Juan Pujol, mysterious Spaniard and master spy, who bluffed the Germans and saved the world without ever using a gun. Filmmaker Edmon Roch maintains a breathless pace, briskly mixing on-camera intelligence experts with newsreels and (most amusingly) clips from war and espionage movies such as Patton, The Longest Day and Mata Hari. It's a story so hard to believe, that it has to be true."
From the official website: "This is the story about 'the greatest actor in the world'. On the stage that is life he made his unique contribution to the good of mankind. He went by many names, yet never existed. He lived many lives, yet only one was real. In the darkest time in the history of humanity he perpetrated the greatest fraud of the Second World War- fooling the German High Command into believing that the Normandy landings were just a diversionary feint, and that the real invasion would take place in the Pas de Calais.
To the Nazis he was Codename: Alaric. To the British he was simply Garbo. To the world he was a mystery.
But 30 years after the facts and fiction, the cloak of mystery that kept him hidden and tied to Alaric and Garbo finally started to unravel. Nigel West, noted English Spy novelist, started out on a journey to expose the truth about the man born Juan Pujol and uncovered a story so amazing that it could only be true. The man who the world thought to be dead and buried in Angola in 1949, a man that died a hero to both the British and the Nazis, looked pretty spry when discovered in South America 35 years after his burial. This is the story of Garbo." IMDB page here.
