Sam:
(00:14)
Welcome back to Rosie the Reviewer. This week we’re talking about the film Pressure, which came out this year in 2026. It was directed by Anthony Maras and written by Anthony Maras and David Haig. It’s adapted from David Haig’s 2014 stage play. It tells the story of the 72 hours leading up to D-Day as meteorologist Group Captain James Stagg is employed by General Eisenhower to predict the unpredictable — the weather for Operation Overlord. And of course, this is based on a true story. What did you think of this movie?

Maartje:
(00:45)
Many thoughts on this movie. I enjoyed it, first of all. I went into it wanting to enjoy it, which I think helps. It’s very blockbustery for me — it’s not very artsy, it’s pretty straightforward. I think it’s well acted mostly. I think it’s an interesting sort of topic. It’s very niche, obviously, because we’ve seen so many movies about D-Day — what else can you do? But this one at least is sort of niche and not very well known, which I enjoyed. I guess it could seem kind of boring if you hear about a movie being about the weather, but it was pretty interesting actually. So I enjoyed it. How about you?

Sam:
(01:27)
Yeah, I broadly enjoyed the watching experience, and I think most people who watch it will come away and be like, yeah, that was sufficiently tense, it had a sufficient amount of conflict, it was well acted. I think broadly most people will probably like this movie. It does feel a bit like scraping the bottom of the barrel for D-Day movie ideas — the D-Day Weatherman — which is not to say they didn’t still make it feel high stakes, because they did. We were talking about this a bit offline and I was saying, we’ve just seen that Terrence Malick film where artistically he took a risk, and this movie plays it really safe in that department. I think part of what made it enjoyable for me was it’s always fun to see someone’s take on these larger-than-life historical figures. Obviously, seeing Brendan Fraser play Eisenhower is something I was very curious about. And of course he did a good job. But this was a bit of a “fighting the good war” type of movie — it didn’t really have anything to say politically. So yeah, it was a little bit safe, but I think people will probably enjoy it.

Maartje:
(02:30)
Yeah, I really agree, and I guess that’s what makes it such a blockbustery movie. It can’t really rub anyone the wrong way, and I think the best movies do. It’s a little bit safe and it plays things a little bit on the surface, maybe. They try to give Eisenhower these big, larger-than-life feelings about things, and I’m not sure I believe them necessarily, even though Brendan Fraser is an excellent actor and Andrew Scott is great — they’re all very good. I just don’t know if it’s the kind of topic that lends itself particularly well to big feelings. But it was a bit of a shame that you have these really great actors and you don’t make them act too hard, if that makes sense. Even Andrew Scott — they make him a little bit unlikable and a bit stiff at the beginning. I don’t know if I like that. I like him very much as an actor and I think he’s good in this. I just think all of them are capable of a little bit more, maybe.

Sam:
(03:42)
I was reading about the director and he said something like, many people — particularly Americans — remember President Eisenhower, and so they have this idea of Eisenhower in their minds as the man who would later become the President of the United States. And he was a bit of a different person during the Second World War. He was someone who would smoke four to six packs of cigarettes a day, he was drinking like two dozen cups of coffee. He was obviously feeling the weight of this immense responsibility on his shoulders. And so I don’t know that this movie did enough to peel back the popular persona of Eisenhower to let us see this person who was more insecure at the time these events were going on.

Maartje:
(04:27)
You can definitely see that they tried with him and it works on a basic level. I don’t think it works as they intended it to work. But that said, I was excited for this movie and I didn’t leave it feeling disappointed. So I guess those are both good things.

Sam:
(04:47)
Yes. I mean, if you don’t overthink it and you just watch this movie, you’re going to enjoy it. It’s well put together, it feels a bit Oscar-baity. I think people will broadly go and see it and have a good time.

Maartje:
(04:58)
Yes. It’s not unlike The King’s Speech in terms of Oscar-baity stuff.

Sam:
(05:04)
I was going to mention The King’s Speech too. That gives me similar vibes to this one.

Maartje:
(05:09)
Yes. Are you ready to get into the plot?

Sam:
(05:11)
Let’s do it.

Maartje:
(05:12)
Let’s get into the plot. We open on a young man, and we’re looking down at him on a beach as he’s dying. And as we zoom out, we see more bodies washed ashore. And for a second you think, is it D-Day already? Are we here? But no, we’re in England in 1944. There’s an opening card that says the Allies have just attempted a large-scale rehearsal for D-Day known as Exercise Tiger. And then we see Dwight J. Eisenhower, or Ike, played by Brendan Fraser, as he watches worriedly from afar at this disaster unfolding on a beach.

Sam:
(06:05)
Yes. So this is the foundation of Ike’s concern about whether D-Day is going to go off without a hitch and all of these million little details that he has to pull together to make sure that it does. And obviously this is why he’s so concerned about the meteorological forecast, which is the basis for this movie. Exercise Tiger took place at Slapton Sands in Devon, and they chose this location because it closely resembled Utah Beach. They had 30,000 troops who were going to participate in this exercise. They were going to rehearse for D-Day, practise getting onto the landing craft, practise disembarking. Eisenhower wanted it to be realistic, so there was going to be live artillery. They evacuated all of the residents of the town, they covered the beach with mines and obstacles so it would be similar to D-Day, and they sent these men in — between 27th and 29th April, 1944. Unfortunately, they ran into a few issues. When they were doing this practice landing, H-hour was pushed back an hour for the landing troops, but some of the landing ships did not receive the message that the timing had changed, and so they arrived during the artillery bombardment that was supposed to be over by the time they got there. This resulted in the deaths of over a hundred servicemen. And then even more troops were killed when some German E-boats attacked landing ships in the English Channel. E-boats were these super-fast surface attack craft, and they were able to torpedo some of the landing ships, which resulted in the deaths of over 700 servicemen. So over 900 Allied servicemen died altogether during this exercise. And as a result, Eisenhower is obviously feeling very responsible.

Sam:
(07:47)
But at the same time, the Allies learned some very important lessons that they were able to straighten out before D-Day. They implemented new safety procedures — even something as simple as some of the men on the landing craft not knowing how to put their life vests on. So when they got into the water, they were weighed down by their equipment and they drowned. So it was about giving these men practical training: how do you put on your life vest, how do you evacuate a landing craft in an orderly fashion to maximise your chances of survival? They implemented rescue boats so that if any men were caught in the water around the landing ships on D-Day, they could be rescued. They put up stronger defensive screens because they knew there was a risk that the landing ships could be targeted by German torpedoes. And they standardised their radio frequencies with the British so that they wouldn’t have this risk of messages not getting through.

Maartje:
(08:36)
That is one of the things that Eisenhower mentions later going wrong — that their American radios weren’t in tune with the British ones, so that’s why those messages didn’t get across. Which seems like a really stupid mistake. But then I guess you don’t know until you get there.

Sam:
(08:57)
Yeah, there are so many moving parts here, right? And they are planning this massive amphibious landing — the largest one in history — and it hasn’t been done before on this scale. It is obviously a tragedy that over 900 men died, but if you think about it, if they hadn’t solved these problems, they would have recurred on a much more massive scale on D-Day. So this exercise, even though it went wrong — that was kind of the point: to see what would go wrong so they could fix it.

Maartje:
(09:23)
It might have cost them the war if they hadn’t had this mishap, probably. If they’d had all these problems at the real thing — who knows? If they’d even managed to get off those beaches.

Sam:
(09:35)
Yeah, for sure. It would have made things a lot more difficult.

Maartje:
(09:38)
And this is also where the movie title comes in — we haven’t even talked about it yet, but it’s called Pressure for several reasons. It’s the literal air pressure, it’s the weather pressure, it’s the pressure on Ike, and it’s basically the pressure on everybody in this movie.

Sam:
(09:56)
Yeah, for sure.

Maartje:
(09:57)
I like it as a title, to be honest. It’s quirky and I like it.

Sam:
(10:01)
Yeah, and we should say too, there are a number of small scenes during the movie where we see everyday soldiers hanging out. They’re obviously getting ready to participate in this massive amphibious assault, but they are still young men being young men, and we do get this sense of what the stakes are if Stagg isn’t able to make an accurate weather prediction.

Maartje:
(10:24)
That’s why the opening shot is so moving — because the boy, I don’t even want to call him a man, I think he’s a boy. They did that on purpose: make you look at this young boy’s face as he’s dying on the beach. It really reminds you that these people were so young and they were taking such a huge risk. But they had to. It’s a good opening. I enjoyed the opening.

Sam:
(10:49)
Yeah.

Maartje:
(10:50)
We then skip six weeks and by now it’s early June in the movie. We meet meteorologist and Group Captain James Stagg, played by Andrew Scott, as he says goodbye to his very heavily pregnant wife Liz, because he is summoned by Eisenhower.

Sam:
(11:11)
They’ve shortened the timeline here a little bit, obviously, to make it a bit more tense. But in real life, Stagg joined the team in November 1943, and he actually was the chief meteorologist before Eisenhower was chosen as Supreme Commander. So Stagg was on the team before Ike was. And in the few weeks before D-Day, Ike would stop by Stagg’s desk and ask for a daily weather report. In this way they were able to build a rapport — Eisenhower got to trust Stagg’s judgement. Stagg was a geophysicist by trade, which is effectively using physics to study natural phenomena like oceans and air currents. He’d been recently working at the Met Office, coordinating Air Force and Army weather services. Obviously this impressed somebody somewhere, and that’s why he was chosen for this job. When he gets into his position, there are three independent weather bureaus that report to him: the U.S. Army Air Force, led by Colonel Crick, who we’ll meet in the movie very shortly; the Met Office — Met is short for Meteorological Office — and the Navy. And as we mentioned in our episode on The Longest Day, several factors were needed for a successful invasion, including a low tide, so that they could see the German obstacles on the beach and they wouldn’t be hidden by the water. A full moon, so that when the paratroopers were dropping the night before, the pilots had some visibility. They needed appropriate cloud cover for aircraft, but the aircraft also needed sufficient visibility. And of course they needed good weather for a landing — if the wind and waves were too high, it would be extremely dangerous to put men off in the water.

Sam:
(12:47)
So Stagg has this extremely difficult job of having to collate and aggregate all this information and then interpret it in such a way that he can make an accurate prediction, in an era where predicting the weather more than twenty-four hours out was viewed as unlikely to be very accurate.

Maartje:
(13:06)
Stagg gets brought to their headquarters — by now it’s 2nd June, I think. They don’t really tell you in the movie, but it’s got to be, because it’s about the seventy-two hours before D-Day after all. He’s met by his aide from the Met Office, Andrew Carter, played by Jojo Macari. Carter is impressed with Stagg because he’s read some of his papers and is trying to have a conversation with him about them. But Stagg’s not very talkative. And as Carter shows him around the place, Stagg immediately hates everything about his working environment. It’s noisy and there are people hammering away, and he’s like, can people stop hammering for a second? He’s also not a fan of how the Met Office is doing things currently, because they are not up to his standards. Stagg is kind of portrayed as being no fun and very serious and almost unlikable, I think the movie does this on purpose to offset him against Crick in a minute. But we need it for the tension and the pressure.

Sam:
(14:15)
Yes, I think if you go and look at a picture of James Stagg, you can just tell from his photo that he was a very buttoned-up, austere kind of person.

Maartje:
(14:23)
Yes, and we all like Andrew Scott too much for it to be entirely believable that he would be like that.

Sam:
(14:30)
Ha!

Sam:
(14:32)
Stagg meets First Lieutenant Kay Summersby, played by Carice van Houten, who takes him up to see Ike. She’s Ike’s secretary, she has his ear, she pretty much runs the place, and she ends up being an emotional go-between between Stagg and Ike in the film, which I don’t know if that’s directly accurate to real life, but I’m not unhappy about it because I think she’s a well-written character and I was glad to see that they gave a woman something to do in this movie.

Maartje:
(14:59)
I also liked her a lot. I thought the movie could have gone a number of ways. They could have leaned into the fact that she had a supposed affair with Eisenhower and they didn’t hammer on that too much. It was clear that they had a personal relationship, but the movie didn’t make it about them specifically, and I enjoyed that they let her be this woman who could talk back to Ike but also just run circles around all the other men there. I enjoyed that in the movie.

Sam:
(15:30)
Prior to the war, Summersby had had several jobs, including fashion model. So you may not expect that she would be raised to this position of importance, but she drove ambulances during the Blitz, and she was so good at it — so good at navigating London at night when familiar landmarks were gone and it was very dangerous — that she became Eisenhower’s driver in May 1942. And then as he was promoted to Supreme Commander, she went with him and became his personal assistant. Even after he had a new driver, she was still around. She’d been previously married, and at the time she met Ike she actually had a fiancé who unfortunately died in the North African campaign while clearing mines. She was very heavily involved in Eisenhower’s life — she was the host of his formal dinner parties when he had the brass over to discuss military strategy. And she was even there when he signed the German surrender in May 1945.

Maartje:
(16:26)
I also want to say that as an actress I think she’s great. She’s very charming and she looks like she could run circles around these men. So I think it’s really well cast.

Sam:
(16:39)
Yeah, I thought she was quite good. And I liked that — I believe the real-life Kay Summersby was around forty when this happened, maybe in her late thirties — so I did like that they cast an actress of the appropriate age, someone with a bit more life experience and gravitas.

Maartje:
(16:55)
Ike tells Stagg, as they meet for the first time in the movie, that D-Day is on 5th June and asks Stagg to give him a weather prediction. Basically tells him: give me a good one. And Stagg then tells him in no uncertain terms that he can’t possibly predict accurately because it’s too far in the future. They have a little back and forth about whether that counts as far away, and Stagg doesn’t smile or laugh or do anything, and he reluctantly says he’ll do his best. And of course Ike says, I already expect your best. We then learn that Brooke recommended Stagg to him over Crick. And Crick is, as already mentioned, the American equivalent of Stagg and someone Eisenhower had been working with for a while. But Stagg isn’t there to impress anybody — he’s just there to tell it as accurately as he can.

Sam:
(17:58)
Eisenhower had worked closely with Crick in the North African campaign. Crick had provided him with a lot of accurate weather forecasts before, and so the fact that he went with Stagg over Crick is kind of interesting.

Maartje:
(18:11)
Yep.

Sam:
(18:11)
So Colonel Irving P. Crick is played by Chris Messina in this movie. He’s fun, he’s annoyingly charming compared to Stagg. It’s very American versus British, almost stereotypically so. And if you look up a picture of Crick, you can just tell by looking at him that he’s a bit of a charmer — maybe some used-car-salesman vibes. He uses analogue weather charts from years ago to predict sunny weather on D-Day, but Stagg is like, well, I don’t want to go with this analogue data — weather over England is notoriously unpredictable; he wants real data. Now, the way that Crick predicted the weather is actually a method we often use today. A lot of the digital projections that weather forecasts are based on are based on computers looking at historical data and saying, OK, with all of these variables in place, in the past when this happened, this was the weather outcome. So this method that Crick is using is not obsolete necessarily — it just works better in some weather contexts than others.

Maartje:
(18:32)
Ha ha ha.

Maartje:
(19:20)
Yeah, and also, as we’ll figure out later in the movie, Crick leaves out the charts and circumstances that don’t really fit the narrative of having good weather. So it’s a bit pick-and-choose, and obviously if you only look at his evidence, you’d be likely to assume there would be good weather on D-Day. Whereas Stagg uses a different method — he looks at plenty of things and puts them all together differently. So obviously they are going to disagree, and they kind of have to, because otherwise you wouldn’t have a movie.

Sam:
(19:57)
Yeah, and Crick is willing to be very confident about his prediction, whereas Stagg is much more cautious. He’s like, well, I can predict the weather, but it’s the weather — any prediction I make could be wrong. He’s unwilling to say one hundred per cent this is what the weather will be. Whereas Crick is much more likely to say, I’m so confident in this prediction, and I have a history of being right. And so this is kind of a thing too — Eisenhower is used to getting advice where the person giving it is very: yep, I’m sure, go ahead. And Stagg is really not like that.

Maartje:
(20:33)
Yep. Stagg is also very British in the sense that he doesn’t want to boast, but in this case he’s wrong not to boast — or wrong not to be more assertive — about something as unpredictable as the weather.

Sam:
(20:44)
Yeah. So a little history on meteorology. Historically, a lot of people tried to predict the weather without much accuracy, and by the 1500s there were two schools of thought: theoretical science based on past observations, and astrology. A lot of people thought you could maybe tell the weather by looking at the stars. And then we move forward in time, and René Descartes begins the scientific revolution in meteorology. He starts making deductive conclusions about weather phenomena and this establishes meteorology as a legitimate science — it’s no longer guesswork. And then a little further in time, the thermometer and barometer are invented in the 18th century, and so we’re able to start actually measuring weather data over time. In the 19th century, we’re able to start establishing weather observing networks because of the telegraph and the ability to take photographs. So people all over the world can start transmitting information to each other, and that makes the predictive data a little better. The first routine weather forecast is made in 1902. Scientists begin to consider mathematical models to make predictions in the early 20th century. And then in 1919, there’s a concept that really revolutionises weather forecasting — the Norwegian cyclone model. This starts to view weather systems as having distinct warm and cold fronts, saying you can’t just look at surface observations; you have to consider upper-atmosphere conditions because those impact the weather as well. And we do see Stagg specifically mentioning this in the movie — he’s saying, why don’t we have any data on upper-atmosphere conditions? This is really going to affect our weather forecast. And it wasn’t until after the war that digital computers could assist with predictions. So in this time period, much of a good meteorologist’s value is being able to connect disparate data and fill in the blanks.

Maartje:
(22:41)
It’s pretty amazing, actually, when you think about it that the weather forecast is still so unpredictable. They can all try to predict it but they are hardly ever completely right about it.

Sam:
(22:52)
Yeah, for sure. It’s so changeable, and they’re in a situation where they can’t really afford to make mistakes.

Maartje:
(22:58)
No — there are a couple of hundred thousand lives at stake.

Maartje:
(23:02)
Stagg, based on real data, predicts bad weather on 5th June and makes enemies of pretty much everybody.

Sam:
(23:10)
Yeah, he doesn’t just want to tell people what they want to hear. He’s going to give them the actual forecast, and that is very much not what people are interested in hearing. They really want 5th June to be a go. All these pieces are in place. One of the things I enjoyed was that we did get to see a few little scenes — out in the ocean, and in various places around the world — of people putting up weather balloons to try and gather data, and that’s the data that Stagg is using to try and make a prediction.

Maartje:
(23:39)
Yeah, it’s a pretty smart way of show-don’t-tell, but it’s immediately clear what you’re looking at. I quite enjoyed that. And another thing we see all throughout the movie is that they used real footage in between the modern footage — you see soldiers, you see the sea as it was at the time, you see a lot of black-and-white stuff that’s been colourised and it’s really interesting and really well done as well.

Sam:
(24:07)
Yeah.

Maartje:
(24:08)
We see Bernard Montgomery — Monty — played by Damian Lewis. He’s showing some of the deception troops, as we have seen before. We also see the dummy paratroop figures called the Ruperts. We saw these in The Longest Day — if you want to go and listen to that episode, we talk about them a little bit more there. Monty wants D-Day as quickly as possible and he even suggests moving it forward. He doesn’t really care about the weather — he’s like, we need D-Day to happen regardless. And he even tries to pressure Stagg into changing his mind about the weather. He’s very unpleasant in this movie. This entire film made me not like Monty very much.

Sam:
(24:52)
From his side of things, he’s like, well, we’ve put all of these deception measures in place, and the longer we wait, the more likely it is that the Germans are going to discover that we’re messing with them and figure out what our real plans are.

Maartje:
(25:05)
Monty and Eisenhower were very different in terms of leadership. As Monty likes to remind Eisenhower, he’s been in battle, whereas Eisenhower has never been in battle. Eisenhower wanted to do an assault on all fronts with all the armies together, and Monty would have liked to have done it by himself — so they were very different kinds of men. And they are the other main point of contention in this movie. You’ve got Stagg and Crick on the one hand and you’ve got Monty and Ike on the other, providing all the tension between the characters.

Sam:
(25:42)
Yeah, and I think we talked about Monty in quite a bit more detail in our A Bridge Too Far episode, if you want to check that out — more on what kind of leader he was and what kind of leader the Germans expected him to be.

Maartje:
(25:53)
If I remember correctly, that movie even opens saying these two were rivals. So it makes sense.

Sam:
(26:01)
Yeah, for sure.

Maartje:
(26:02)
And we also talk about Monty in even more detail in the I Was Monty’s Double episode, if you want to listen to that as well.

Sam:
(26:11)
Yes, and if I remember correctly, the gentleman who played Monty’s double was actually present at the Exercise Tiger rehearsal.

Maartje:
(26:18)
That would make a lot of sense, actually.

Sam:
(26:20)
Stagg attends the meeting of the senior brass alone. He doesn’t take Crick with him because he doesn’t want there to be conflicting ideas. He wants to present his prediction alone. And he advises them not to go on 5th June because there are two storms coming in that will cause terrible weather conditions for a landing. He actually suggests they don’t go until 18th June, and of course everyone is quite up in arms about this. There are so many factors in play — they already have all these troops loaded on boats, a lot of these people have been briefed on different elements of the D-Day landings. If you let these people loose, there’s much more chance that German intelligence is going to pick up details about D-Day that they shouldn’t have. Even things like having to refuel all of these vessels — there are just so many moving parts that delaying it by a couple of weeks is going to be a huge problem.

Maartje:
(27:16)
And this is actually the part of the movie where we get to learn about the conditions that Sam mentioned earlier — the factors that all need to coincide. And it’s Monty that reminds Stagg that that combination only happens on 5th June, and then the next window isn’t until 18th June. So not a lot of people like Stagg at this point. But he’s also not there to be liked, which he reminds people of later in the movie.

Sam:
(27:46)
Yeah. And then we get to see Eisenhower deep in thought. He’s reflecting on Exercise Tiger again, and the fact that as much as he wants to go on 5th June and they’re ready to go on 5th June, he doesn’t want unnecessary casualties. He realises that all it takes is one mistake, and this is too important to risk it.

Maartje:
(28:09)
Crick then comes to Ike to complain about Stagg, and as he’s there with Ike, Summersby comes in and informs Ike that the D-Day landings have been leaked. And you can tell this isn’t the first time that intelligence has leaked — he tells her to handle it, and she does. Just another reminder of how fragile this entire operation is. If the Germans find out they’re coming, the element of surprise is gone and there’s no point.

Sam:
(28:41)
Yeah. So this is based on real events. The Associated Press sent out a mistaken news flash on 3rd June 1944, supposedly the result of a typist error — there was a typist practising what they would release when the invasion happened, and this flash goes out saying the Allies have landed. Though the AP quickly retracted the error, many newspapers picked it up and ran it as front-page news over the next couple of days.

Maartje:
(29:08)
I wonder if that in the end ended up helping them in a way, because it had been mistakenly put out there and obviously it didn’t happen, so that would have caused confusion maybe.

Sam:
(29:20)
Right. And as we’ve talked about in previous episodes, the Germans knew that something was coming. The fact that they had so many troops and vessels and planes gathered in the south of England — it was impossible for German reconnaissance to miss it. So they knew an invasion was probable, but they didn’t have all the details.

Maartje:
(29:40)
No, and that’s what we’ll find out — Rommel on the day of the invasion is away.

Sam:
(29:45)
After Crick goes to Eisenhower and tells him he thinks Stagg’s forecast is wrong, Stagg gets a real earful from Ike. Ike is like, well, I trust this man — how come you came without him, didn’t let him come to the meeting, didn’t let me hear his misgivings about your forecast? And then Summersby comforts him and tells him about what she’s done in the war — her ambulance driving and her history with Ike.

Maartje:
(30:10)
This is the closest we get to a hint of her being in a relationship with Ike without it being stated outright. He talks to her about their time together and it all feels very loaded. She says how weathermen are a little boring, and he has this whole passionate monologue about: weathermen, maybe, but how can you call the weather boring? And it’s quite a nice thing to hear about the weather, because you could say the same thing about the movie — it sounds boring but it’s still very interesting.

Sam:
(30:52)
Yeah, for sure. It’s nice that he has someone to commiserate with in this occasionally hostile environment.

Maartje:
(30:59)
Apparently in real life this blowing-up by Eisenhower at Stagg did not happen. They had a pretty professional relationship — they’d been working together a bit longer, obviously, and they knew the stakes. So this didn’t happen, but I know why it does in the movie; it makes sense. You need the conflict for it to be a good movie.

Sam:
(31:21)
Yeah, and it gives us a better sense of how stressed out and anxious Eisenhower is about all of this, and how badly he wants it to go right. This would be the one time where it would be nice to have a solid, concrete, universally agreed-upon forecast — and they just don’t have it.

Maartje:
(31:37)
Yes. From Eisenhower’s point of view, it would be logical to want to believe Crick because he had been right so often. Except, as Stagg likes to remind him, the weather conditions that Crick predicted were far more stable than the weather in England. So he got lucky, as he says in the movie.

Sam:
(31:59)
Yeah.

Maartje:
(32:00)
It’s 4th June, one in the morning, so we’re approaching the original D-Day. Stagg and Crick still won’t agree on the weather and the tensions rise. Then the phone rings — it’s for Stagg — and Stagg learns that his wife is in St Mary’s Hospital and it’s been bombed. And that’s all he hears. He doesn’t know if she’s still alive, how the baby’s doing, anything. And he kind of swallows and goes back to work. Ike still wants to invade on Monday and he gives Stagg three hours to prove that the storms he’s predicting are real — to give him proof that they shouldn’t do the invasion on 5th June.

Maartje:
(32:46)
So it’s very tense. The pressure’s up.

Sam:
(32:48)
Yes — title of the movie, take a drink. And then Summersby tells Ike off a little bit. She’s like, look, Stagg just found out that his wife could be dead, he doesn’t know anything more about it — just a little reminder that you’re not the only one under pressure here. In their final briefing to the brass after they’ve been up working all night, Crick and Stagg are still on opposite ends, and we see Stagg at his most heated. He’s confident in his weather forecast — he’s like, I know it’s not going to be a sunny day, I know that’s wrong. So Ike makes the very difficult decision to postpone D-Day.

Maartje:
(33:22)
Yeah, that scene was pretty well acted, I thought. It’s nice to see Andrew Scott get to actually act a bit. I feel like his character is so muted, just as his character, that it’s nice to see him blow up.

Sam:
(33:36)
Yes, definitely.

Maartje:
(33:38)
And he also calls Crick moronic at some point — not in the same scene, but I like that quite a bit. He’s got this almost sarcastic sense of humour. It’s in there somewhere.

Sam:
(33:50)
Yeah, and you just have to think you’re probably more likely to get Crick on side if you don’t go around assuming that everything he knows is wrong and calling him a moron.

Maartje:
(34:00)
I did root obviously for Stagg, but I watched it again and I felt kind of bad for Crick. He’s been made to look the fool in this movie. I wonder if it wasn’t that intense in real life.

Sam:
(34:15)
Yeah, I mean, I know that they didn’t agree in real life and they had these two diametrically opposed methods of forecasting the weather. But like we said, Crick in many contexts would have been entirely correct to predict the weather the way that he did. He just didn’t have the expertise required in this particular situation.

Maartje:
(34:33)
Yeah. Another thing by the way that the movie does that I do like is that they showcase Stagg’s team — you get to see what everybody’s doing, everyone’s pulling their weight, and you get to see all the women doing their thing as well, because I reckon there were quite a few women in this department. And even though they don’t have a lot of lines, you do get to see them on phones, getting diagrams and all that. I thought it was good that they showed his whole team. And it felt different in that way to The Imitation Game, where it felt like everybody else was an idiot and only Alan was smart. With this film, even though they don’t like Stagg at first, the team really becomes a team and they’re all looking for good evidence. And I enjoyed that.

Sam:
(35:23)
Yeah, absolutely.

Maartje:
(35:24)
It’s Sunday 4th June and it’s sunny. And they’ve obviously decided not to go ahead with D-Day, so everyone’s sitting in church looking at the sunshine — and even Stagg is looking out at the sun, but he just knows it’s going to rain. Everybody’s in a church. Stagg is not. He’s on the outside looking in, being all gloomy about not going ahead with D-Day. And then as he stands outside under a tree, the sun goes away, the wind picks up, and there’s a massive storm.

Sam:
(35:56)
Yeah, everyone leaves the church and then you just see Crick sitting in there realising that he was wrong.

Maartje:
(36:01)
Wow wow wow.

Sam:
(36:03)
Stagg’s team does some more work. They find there’s going to be a break in the storm on 6th June. It’s not a huge break, but it’s a gap long enough where D-Day could potentially go ahead. So Stagg digs up some more evidence and he asks Crick for a second opinion — and this was quite nice. He goes in and he’s like, yeah, I think I’ve found a break in the storm. And Crick is like, man, you were right, it’s fine — look out the window, it’s clearly storming. And Stagg is like, well, no, now I’m thinking maybe there’s a way for us to still make this work. So he gets Crick’s approval and then he goes to break the news to Eisenhower that they can potentially go on 6th June.

Maartje:
(36:47)
Eisenhower, upon hearing this news, is like: what on earth are you talking about? You just said there was going to be a storm and there’s a hurricane outside! And then Andrew Scott as Stagg delivers this next line — technically it’s not a hurricane, sir — and it’s so funny. But yes, he tells Ike that they can go, and they should do it on 6th June because that’s the only day there’s going to be a tiny window where they can do it. And it’s just so funny to me.

Sam:
(37:22)
Yeah. And they need to make sure, right? They don’t want to end up in a situation where the break in the storm is so short that they can only get a certain percentage of men on the beach and then they end up stranded because they can’t offload everybody. And so Eisenhower is like, I really want you to be sure that we can definitely land on 6th June and that everything is going to be fine.

Maartje:
(37:46)
Imagine how Eisenhower must have felt — just being told no, you can’t go, and then suddenly: but you have to go right now, if you don’t go now you’ve missed this window.

Maartje:
(37:56)
So D-Day ensues, and while the weather is not super sunny it’s also not bad, and they do have the window where they can land safely. We also see Ike greeting some troops on the ground before they leave. And then we see D-Day — there’s a bit of fighting on a beach. I don’t know if I thought this was strictly necessary to show, but there’s a bit of blood and people dying. Despite the heavy fighting, they make it onto the beaches and they secure them, and that’s when they all celebrate.

Sam:
(38:28)
Yes, it’s very intense. Everybody — Eisenhower, Monty, Stagg, Crick — they’re all in this room together and there are all these women operating the telephones, waiting for information from the front. And I feel like they felt they had to show some fighting — we’re doing a D-Day movie, we can’t just not show the landings. But the real action for our purposes is this little room where all these people are waiting to see if the weather forecast is correct, if this invasion is going to be successful.

Maartje:
(38:59)
I also really like that before they enter this room, it’s Stagg and Crick asking each other if they slept — and they’re like: not a wink, you? And they’re finally friends.

Sam:
(39:11)
Yeah. And the Allies certainly benefited from the Germans believing that no one would invade in this weather. And as we discussed in our Longest Day episode, the Germans had noticed that the British had a track record during the war for attacking on calm days, so they were certainly caught off guard by the Allies taking advantage of this gap in the storm.

Maartje:
(39:30)
Yeah. Well, Stagg’s job is over. He says goodbye to Summersby — they even have a little hug together, which is quite nice. It did feel a little bit awkward, I’m not going to lie. But Stagg goes to the hospital. It’s all very tense still — the pressure’s still on — because he doesn’t know what happened to his wife. So he goes over there and he finds her and they have a reunion and they’re both crying. And then it’s still tense because you don’t know where their son is, and then the camera pans suddenly over to a crying boy. And thank God — they both survived.

Sam:
(40:06)
Yeah. Personal stakes in the movie about the D-Day Weatherman.

Sam:
(40:11)
There’s an end card that says: at his inauguration in 1961, JFK asked Eisenhower what gave him the edge on D-Day. Eisenhower replied: we had better meteorologists than the Germans.

Maartje:
(40:22)
It feels to me kind of anticlimactic for that to be the reason. But I guess it’s true.

Sam:
(40:29)
Yeah, for sure.

Maartje:
(40:31)
And that’s the end of the movie. I enjoyed it, despite all the things we’ve already mentioned about whether we really need another movie about D-Day. You have some notes — tell me your notes.

Sam:
(40:50)
I do. So just a bit of a postscript on Stagg. After the war he returned to the Met Office to his previous career. He was knighted in 1954 and he went on to publish a memoir in 1971, and then he passed away in 1975. And I enjoyed this — I was reading an article from the Smithsonian magazine about Pressure, about the movie and how historically accurate it is. It’s a really good article so we’ll definitely link it on the website if anyone wants to check it out. But they said Crick, for his part, claimed credit for the invasion forecast until his death in 1996.

Maartje:
(41:26)
Jesus Christ, why am I not surprised?

Sam:
(41:29)
Ha! Yeah, it made me laugh.

Sam:
(41:31)
And a little more on Summersby, as our main female character in this film. She became a captain in the U.S. Women’s Army Corps and an American citizen after the war with Eisenhower’s help. She was awarded several medals, including the British Empire Medal and the Bronze Star. And she went on to become a costume designer and TV fashion consultant after the war. But I kind of got the sense that, like many people who find themselves at the centre of momentous events, she felt the rest of her life was a little bit of an anticlimax. And as for her affair with Ike — her 1948 memoir does not mention an affair, which, considering the time period in which it was written, you could perhaps see why, if there had been an affair. But then the memoir published after her death — and written after Eisenhower’s death in 1969 — stated that they had been romantically involved. Now, Summersby herself is only mentioned once in Eisenhower’s 1948 war memoir. This could be because you might not want to publicise something like that — it would be very bad for his public image. We don’t know for sure that they actually had an affair. Certainly there were rumours at the time because they were very close. And Summersby even said in her book that they never consummated their affair — they had some kisses but they weren’t actually sleeping together. And some people have said that perhaps the emphasis on her supposed affair with Eisenhower in the later memoir was put in there to stir up interest and generate sales for the book. So we don’t really know what the truth was. But supposedly she once called at the White House during Eisenhower’s presidency, and he received her very graciously, and they had a little visit, and then she was politely told not to call again.

Maartje:
(43:18)
That hurts. Yeah.

Sam:
(43:19)
Yeah.

Maartje:
(43:19)
But yeah, I like that the movie didn’t go with the rumours. It gives her more agency, I think, in a movie like this, for her not to be having an affair with Ike.

Sam:
(43:30)
I think if you’re making a movie where you are trying to tell this true story — from the guy who wrote the play, Haig. From his point of view, he had said that he wanted to write about a Scottish war hero. So if you’re trying to make a movie that’s fairly historically accurate, I can see why you would not include that, because it would maybe place some doubt on the veracity of the rest of the film.

Maartje:
(43:50)
Yes, I agree. And it’s nice to have a female character who’s not there to please the man for once.

Sam:
(43:58)
Yeah, for sure.

Maartje:
(43:59)
We have to rate this movie, but before we do, I would like to remind you that you can follow us wherever you get your podcasts. I would like to implore you to follow us on Apple Podcasts if you’re on there, because most of our listeners are from there but they are not subscribed to our podcast. So please do that. And you can also send this episode to a friend.

Sam:
(44:21)
Every time you send this episode to a friend, a female actor gets a meaty part in a Second World War movie.

Maartje:
(44:27)
Perfect. We’re rating this movie Eisenhower’s big-ass foreheads out of ten. Do you want to go first, Sam?

Sam:
(44:35)
Sure. I’ll rate this movie seven and a half Eisenhower’s big-ass foreheads out of ten, because I think it’s very watchable and fairly historically accurate, and I like that there was a female character with something to do. It has its minor issues — I feel like it’s playing it pretty safe, I don’t feel like it took any big swings artistically. But as a historical drama, it’s definitely not the worst one we’ve seen. I think people will like this movie, I think it’ll be fairly successful and it’ll probably win some awards. How about you?

Maartje:
(45:06)
Same — I even had the same rating in mind. I’m also going to give it seven and a half Eisenhower’s big-ass foreheads out of ten, for the exact same reasons. And also because I like pretty much every single actor in this movie. Everyone is good. Even though some of the brass are a bit funny — I feel like it’s difficult to play a part like Monty and not look a bit clownish, which I thought Damian Lewis did a great job with, but also it’s such a funny little part to play. So I don’t know if it’s good or not — I can’t tell. But yeah. Same rating for me, and no extra argumentation.

Maartje:
(45:49)
Are you reading anything?

Sam:
(45:50)
Yes, I am reading Untold: Northeastern Ontario’s Military Past by Dieter K. Buse and Graeme S. Mount. This book covers 1662 through to the First World War, and then there is — or will be — a volume about the Second World War and the Cold War, which I’ll definitely have to pick up after. Yeah, just interested in reading a little more about the history of the place I’m from.

Maartje:
(46:17)
That sounds quite meaty actually, as far as books go. Please remind people of the book that you’ve just finished, just to give people a heads up about the episodes that are coming next.

Sam:
(46:30)
Yeah, I recently finished the Oppenheimer biography, American Prometheus. It was long but it was pretty interesting — particularly the postwar politics and the witch hunt that Oppenheimer was subjected to during the McCarthy era. So yeah, we’re going to talk about that pretty soon.

Maartje:
(46:48)
And George is going to be back with us, which has been a while, so it’ll be good to have him back on. I’m also reading something for once. I’m reading Project Hail Mary. A bit late, but it’s really fun.

Sam:
(47:01)
Yeah, that was a good one. I liked it.

Maartje:
(47:02)
And I just bought six other books and none of them are non-fiction. They’re all fiction.

Sam:
(47:09)
Hell yeah, it’s the novel summer. We’re reading novels.

Maartje:
(47:12)
Whew. Yeah, I’m looking forward to getting into those. I hope I’ll stick with them for once. If not, they look nice on my shelf.

Sam:
(47:20)
Yeah. Every book reader needs to have a huge collection of books on their to-read list.

Maartje:
(47:26)
Yeah, because what is life if not filled with books that you haven’t read?

Sam:
(47:32)
Yeah. Always nice to have something to look forward to.

Maartje:
(47:34)
Right. Thank you for listening to yet another episode of Rosie. You can follow us wherever you get your podcasts and rate us five stars. You can send this episode to your friend. You can follow us on Instagram at @rosiethereviewerpodcast, or you can visit our website, rosiethereviewer.com, where you can also rate this movie with us. And that would be fun. So please do that. We’ll see you next week.

Sam:
(47:55)
Bye!

Maartje:
(47:56)
Bye!