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Home / Best Quotes / Operation Mincemeat (2022) Best Movie Quotes

Operation Mincemeat (2022) Best Movie Quotes

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Starring: Colin Firth, Matthew Macfadyen, Kelly Macdonald, Penelope Wilton, Johnny Flynn, Jason Isaacs, Simon Russell Beale, Hattie Morahan, Paul Ritter, Mark Gatiss

OUR RATING: ★★★½

Story:

Period war drama directed by John Madden. Inspired by a true story, set in 1943 during World War II, in Operation Mincemeat (2022), the Allies are determined to break Hitler’s grip on occupied Europe and plan an invasion of Sicily, but they face an impossible challenge, how to protect a massive invasion force from potential massacre. It falls to two intelligence officers, Ewen Montagu (Colin Firth) and Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew Macfadyen), to come up with the most inspired and improbable disinformation strategy of the war, centered on the most unlikely of secret agents, a dead man.

 

Our Favorite Quotes:

'In any story, if it's a good story, there is that which is seen, and that which is hidden. This is especially true in stories of war.' - Ian Fleming (Operation Mincemeat) Click To Tweet

 

Best Quotes


 

Ian Fleming: In any story, if it’s a good story, there is that which is seen, and that which is hidden. This is especially true in stories of war. There is the war we see, a contest of bombs and bullets, courage, sacrifice, and brute force. As we count the winners, the losers, and the dead. But alongside this war, another war is waged. A battleground in shades of gray, played out in deception, seduction, and bad faith. The participants are strange. They are seldom what they seem, and fiction and reality blur. This war is a wilderness of mirrors in which the truth is protected by a bodyguard of lies. This is our war.


 

Ewen Montagu: Iris says marriages change, that romance and love belong to the young. I don’t believe that, or feel it. And the thought they may never be coming back… I know I can be remote, lost in my work, not as attentive as I might be.
Hester Leggett: You’re an imperfect person. I doubt you’re the first.


 

Ewen Montagu: I want Iris to be happy, even if it comes at the expense of my own happiness.
Hester Leggett: I’ve never heard her say a word about unhappiness.
Ewen Montagu: That’s because she knows you’d jump on a grenade for me.
Hester Leggett: Only on your good days.


 

Ewen Montagu: Iris said if I really cared, I’d come to America with them.
Hester Leggett: Oh, people say all sorts of things. She knows your duty is to your family and your country. The nightmare marching this way is only too real.


 

John Masterman: Hitler will need to believe that our next target is Greece, which, yes, will require an elaborate deception. A deception plan so complex I believe it can only be handled by The Twenty Committee.
Admiral John Godfrey: Which is why I shall focus the committee’s attention on the Trout Memo, the document I compiled a few years ago, to which my assistant, Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming, made some contribution. “Intelligence is like trout fishing. The trout fisher, in tying his lure, attempts to attract the fish.”
Winston Churchill: I detest fish.
Admiral John Godfrey: Well, fish as metaphor, in this case.


 

Ian Fleming: Prime Minister, the memo in the hands of The Twenty Committee may, I believe, hold the key to deceiving Hitler. And while some of the ideas may appear fantastic.
Winston Churchill: I applaud the fantastic. It has many advantages over the mundane. But the more fantastic, the more foolproof the plan must be.


 

Winston Churchill: If we do not fool the Nazis, and the enemy is waiting for us on those beaches, history herself will avert her eyes from the slaughter.


 

Charles Cholmondeley: I’ve also been working on a deception plan, which I’ve dubbed Operation Trojan Horse. It’s a ruse taken from the Trout Memo. Idea number twenty-eight.
Ian Fleming: Number twenty-eight? A corpse carrying false papers drops on the coast from a parachute that supposedly failed.
Admiral John Godfrey: The Trout Memo is dead.
Ian Fleming: I believe the prime minister has an aversion to fish, Admiral. He did not kill the entire memo.
Admiral John Godfrey: A corpse carrying fake documents, hmm? Of all the ideas in the Trout Memo, that one is by far the most precarious.

 

'I applaud the fantastic. It has many advantages over the mundane. But the more fantastic, the more foolproof the plan must be.' - Winston Churchill (Operation Mincemeat) Click To Tweet

 

Ewen Montagu: I’m simply saying that for a deception to reach Hitler, it must have a channel. Spain is neutral, the ideal place to launch such a plan because she is crawling with spies from both sides. She has a vast coastline.
Charles Cholmondeley: And since our agents in Madrid have an elaborate network, we could quite literally float the documents right into enemy hands.


 

Charles Cholmondeley: “Deception needs a channel.” Those were your words.
Ewen Montagu: They were. I’m only imagining a dead body hurtling through the air.
Ian Fleming: The plan is bold, there’s no question, but it’s ours now, regardless. M’s seen to that.
Charles Cholmondeley: Although, what if the body does disintegrate on impact?
Ian Fleming: Let’s not bring that up now, shall we? And definitely not in front of M.


 

Ewen Montagu: Why do you call Godfrey “M”?
Ian Fleming: Because I called my mother “M”. Most terrifying, most impossible, most demanding creature I’ve ever known.


 

Ewen Montagu: So, Mother has no faith in this?
Ian Fleming: That’s because Number twenty-eight wasn’t Godfrey’s idea. It was mine. A plot I cribbed from Basil Thompson’s novel The Milliner’s Hat. Have you read Thompson?
Ewen Montagu: I prefer Buchan.


 

Charles Cholmondeley: What if the autopsy reveals that he didn’t die of drowning? Or if the briefcase is returned to us without the Germans seeing its contents?
Ian Fleming: Charles, why on earth do you keep poking holes in our plan?
Charles Cholmondeley: I’m preemptively poking, to ensure all the details are properly thought through. Because as Godfrey made clear, our feet will be held to the fire soon enough.
Ewen Montagu: The plan will work if we make it work.

 

'Every piece makes a whole. A man is a mosaic.' - Ewen Montagu (Operation Mincemeat) Click To Tweet

 

Ewen Montagu: Well, what say we start with the easy part and find ourselves a corpse?


 

Ewen Montagu: [referring to the corpse] Where are his legs?


 

Ewen Montagu: And yet here we are, in a huge city, in the middle of a world war, and we can’t seem to find ourselves a single suitable corpse.


 

Ian Fleming: In the real war, there are constant reminders of the brutality at hand. A quarter of a million lie dead in battle, an unspeakable horror with no end in sight. While in the other war, the war of shadows, normal life appears to continue, itself an act of canny deception. In this war, real lives are also lost, and even fictional lives can meet an untimely end. And once in a great while, the laws of nature reverse themselves entirely, and the dead are made alive again.


 

Ewen Montagu: [referring to their dead man] The crucial thing is that he must be real. As real as you or I.

 

'People are often one way with family, a different way entirely out in the world. One minute Jekyll, the next, Hyde.' - Bentley Purchase (Operation Mincemeat) Click To Tweet

 

Charles Cholmondeley: The thing is, the Germans will scrutinize every detail of our fallen man.


 

Charles Cholmondeley: Even the slightest inconsistency will signal the ruse.
Hester Leggett: So, to create a real fake man from a real dead man, we start by…
Ewen Montagu: By giving him a real, real name.


 

Hester Leggett: [after giving their dead man the name Maj. Bill Martin] There must be a love story if Major Martin’s life is to be believable.
Ewen Montagu: Objection. Creation of a material fact. A real life need not be a romantic one.
Hester Leggett: He would carry a letter from his betrothed professing her deep love for him.
Charles Cholmondeley: That’s very good. That’s precisely the level of detail we need. And he would carry her photograph.
Hester Leggett: Yes.
Ewen Montagu: Well, we clearly read different novels.


 

Charles Cholmondeley: If you could point me to a girl who would give us her photograph.
Jean Leslie: But what would her photograph be used for?
Charles Cholmondeley: Well, I’m afraid that’s classified. But by donating her image, she’d be involved in and on the ground floor of a significant operation.
Jean Leslie: Operation Trojan Horse.
Charles Cholmondeley: It’s been renamed, something less obvious. Operation Mincemeat.
Jean Leslie: Due to the dead body.
Charles Cholmondeley: You surmised that rather quickly.
Jean Leslie: I already knew the plot.


 

Jean Leslie: [volunteering her photo] Would something like this do? Taken by my husband a long time ago.
Charles Cholmondeley: Your husband, I didn’t realize. Well, it’s lovely. It’s perfect.
Jean Leslie: It could be my contribution to the mission. First of many, perhaps. My photograph in exchange for a seat at the table.

 

'It's easier to accept death when you can't see it coming.' - Charles Cholmondeley (Operation Mincemeat) Click To Tweet

 

Bentley Purchase: [as they’re taking photos of the dead man] Let’s just not attempt to make him smile again, please. Does none of us any favors.
Ewen Montagu: Because he looks dead, Bentley. Whatever we do, just deader and deader.
Bentley Purchase: It’s hard to come alive for one’s close up in this state.
Ewen Montagu: If we bungle one tiny detail, a droopy eyelid, an open mouth instead of a smile, we might as well telegraph Berlin ourselves it’s all a hoax.
Bentley Purchase: Then may I suggest a live face?
Ewen Montagu: That looks just like the dead face?
Bentley Purchase: In a city of nine million, surely someone resembles our friend.


 

Charles Cholmondeley: [as they’re looking for men that resemble their dead man] No. too full in the face.
Ewen Montagu: But without the mustache?
Charles Cholmondeley: His brow is too heavy.
Ewen Montagu: Why don’t we try something easier, for God’s sake, like looking for tits on a bull? Forgive me. That was uncalled for.
Jean Leslie: No, I saw the photographs. It’s called for.


 

Jean Leslie: [as they’re trying to give their dead man a story] And is he happy? Is he a happy man?
Ewen Montagu: He wants to be. He started out with such promise, a sense of hope about the world, about his future. But now it all seems dark, uncertain.
Jean Leslie: He is in the middle of a war.
Hester Leggett: Exactly right.


 

Ewen Montagu: [to Jean] It’s your photograph that will be pressed to his heart when he washes ashore.
Charles Cholmondeley: Yes, wallet litter is what you are. Not as in rubbish. That’s just spy parlance for the bits and pieces that one finds in one’s pockets.


 

Ewen Montagu: [after giving their dead man a fiancée] A toast. To Pam, our secret weapon who’s already managed to see what we could not.

 

'Who in these last hours will bear witness to the hidden war, unseen by history, locked away in a buried file? Its tragedies and triumphs unspoken. Its heroes unsung.' - Ian (Operation Mincemeat) Click To Tweet

 

Ewen Montagu: Every piece makes a whole. A man is a mosaic.


 

Ewen Montagu: May I just say I was very sorry to hear of your husband.
Jean Leslie: I’ve been alone for many years, which is why it pleases me to see Bill and Pam so madly in love.
Ewen Montagu: Pam is very lucky to have you cheering her on.
Jean Leslie: And Bill, you.


 

Ewen Montagu: So, two months of work and we’ve managed to deceive the enemy of precisely nothing.


 

Winston Churchill: What happens when the ink washes off as the letter bobs in the sea?
Admiral John Godfrey: They need to use waterproof ink.
Winston Churchill: Only someone planning to drown writes in waterproof ink.


 

Admiral John Godfrey: [to Churchill] My advice is that Mincemeat is killed before it sees the light of day. Our other deception plans are strategies designed to confuse the enemy, throw him off balance. Mincemeat, on the other hand, is an outright lie. A lie that, if detected, would expose every single other deception as false. The Germans would know unequivocally we were landing in Sicily. I think that’s too big a risk. Nonetheless, I would like to keep Mincemeat running a little longer.


 

Winston Churchill: This is the problem when one is dealing with spooks. You do see it. The corkscrew thinking required to manage spies sometimes twists one too many turns, until one finds oneself charging forward, while at the same time looking out of one’s own a**.
Admiral John Godfrey: I assume you’re referring to me.


 

Winston Churchill: The Nazis are expecting a deception, which means that our effort must be unbelievable enough to make it believable. The plan is risky. It’s also highly implausible. Meaning that all the reasons it shouldn’t work are the same reasons the Germans might believe it’s true. So, when can it be ready?
Admiral John Godfrey: Immediately?
Winston Churchill: Correct.

See more Operation Mincemeat Quotes


 

Bentley Purchase: People are often one way with family, a different way entirely out in the world. One minute Jekyll, the next, Hyde.


 

Admiral John Godfrey: Montagu and Cholmondeley will run the briefing today. The operation is theirs, and being theirs, is now theirs to f*** up.
Salvador Gomez-Beare: Quite a vote of confidence.


 

Ewen Montagu: So, we need Clauss because he is a good spy, and will get the papers, Kuhlenthal because he is a bad one, and will believe them. Together, they ensure the best chance that our documents will land in Berlin.


 

Admiral John Godfrey: The prime minister wants all resources employed to make Mincemeat so convincing that Von Roenne believes it, Hitler believes it, and even we believe we are landing in Greece.


 

Charles Cholmondeley: You do see Jean outside of work, don’t you?
Ewen Montagu: We will occasionally work over dinner to iron out Bill and Pam details for verisimilitude’s sake.
Charles Cholmondeley: Verisimilitude.


 

Hester Leggett: Sorry we’re late. It’s bedlam out there!
Jean Leslie: It’s true. We’re all like moles now, scurrying around in the dark.
Ewen Montagu: One blind man leadeth another, both fall in ye ditch.


 

Lt. Bill Jewell: But my crew on the Seraph are a sharp lot. What would I tell them?
Charles Cholmondeley: Tell them it contains a top secret meteorological reporting apparatus.
Lt. Bill Jewell: Sounds like the stuff of fiction.
Charles Cholmondeley: You’re not a writer as well, are you? We’re surrounded by them, you know.
Lt. Bill Jewell: Germans?
Charles Cholmondeley: Writers.


 

Jean Leslie: [reading Hester’s fictitious letter that Pam’s written] “My dearest Bill, I think seeing one’s beloved off at the railway is the poorest form of sport. A train going out can leave a howling gap in one’s days, and one has to try madly, and quite in vain, to fill it with the things one used to enjoy. Why did we have to meet in the middle of a war? For if it weren’t for this madness, we might be married by now, and I wouldn’t be in this dreary office typing minutes all day. That last lovely golden day we spent together, I never wanted it to end. And I know it has been said before, but I do wish that time could stand still, even for just a minute. So don’t let them send you off into the blue, the horrible way they do these days. Now that we’ve found each other out of the whole world, I don’t think I could bear it. All my love, Pam.”


 

Ewen Montagu: We’re going to play a humiliating trick on Hitler.


 

Jean Leslie: Seems strange, doesn’t it? Sending our dear Major off to die?
Charles Cholmondeley: You do know he’s already dead.
Jean Leslie: In a way, yes. But in another, he’s very much alive, our clever, dashing man. Which is why I’d like to thank you, Charles. It’s been a grand adventure.
Charles Cholmondeley: For the two of you.
Jean Leslie: For all of us. We gave Bill a life. One Glyndwr Michael never had. We gave him Pam.


 

Charles Cholmondeley: [to Jean] I wanted Pam. I only mean that our imaginings often surpass what is real, don’t they? I come home every night to a bereft mother pining for her favorite son. Hester lives the spinster’s life, working around the clock rather than face an empty bed. Ewen’s real life is off in America, where he must worry about the safety of his wife and children until they return.


 

Jean Leslie: I have been overcome with embarrassment at my own stupidity. This game we’ve been playing. Bill and Pam, the young lovers, as if you and I were, as if this weren’t a real war. Do you not realize people are talking about us?
Ewen Montagu: Is this about gossip? What does it matter what people say? We both know there’s nothing going on here. I don’t mean nothing, as in…
Jean Leslie: I left behind childish games many years ago, Ewen. The day I buried the man I loved. And while my life may not look like much to you, I have made my way, alone, with the occasional admirer to pass the time. It’s certainly easier and safer.


 

Charles Cholmondeley: It’s easier to accept death when you can’t see it coming.


 

Charles Cholmondeley: I think my testicles dislodged somewhere near Dumfries.


 

Ewen Montagu: There’s an apology I must make to you, and then I promise I’ll go. I wasn’t being honest with you, or even myself, when I said there’s nothing between us. In fact, the very opposite is true. My life is complicated. It’s not an excuse, or a defense, or anything really. Only to say that my feelings for you are real. I should have realized that a long time ago. And perhaps I might have spared you the embarrassment of last night. Because if I in any way…
Jean Leslie: You didn’t. I know you have a wife and family.
Ewen Montagu: I do. And you and I, we have a war to win.
Jean Leslie: Major Martin is in dangerous waters now. He’ll need us more than ever.


 

Ian Fleming: And so, the hidden war continues. Lies are whispered anew. Shadows still flicker. Even the ground refuses to steady in this wilderness of illusions. A man dies. Another begins his journey and waits for his story to be told. But in the conventional war, the wheels of combat turn, the forces of men and machines swell until suddenly the die is cast. There is no turning back.


 

Charles Cholmondeley: There’s a reason tall men don’t serve on small submarines.


 

Ewen Montagu: Our plan proceeds.
Charles Cholmondeley: The fate of the Free World dependent on a corpse and a donkey cart.


 

Ewen Montagu: Dear God! It’s hard to see who’s more up a tree with this, us or the Germans.


 

Jean Leslie: Why does Ewen’s wife write to you and not to him?
Hester Leggett: Every marriage has its difficulties and disappointments. Haven’t we all had our hearts broken over the years? What’s hard to understand about Ewen, hidden beneath all the bluster, is his very deep sense of duty. I only say this because I’m so very fond of you, and him. And her.


 

Charles Cholmondeley: We are not sending hundred thousand men into battle on a missing eyelash.


 

Charles Cholmondeley: You would bring her to your own house? Have you no shame after you’ve jeopardized this entire operation?
Ewen Montagu: You’re the one who approached Jean. You’re the one who insisted on using her photograph!
Charles Cholmondeley: You’re so busy seducing her that you took your eye off your own brother.
Ewen Montagu: You think I told Ivor about Mincemeat?
Charles Cholmondeley: How do we know he’s not behind this?
Ewen Montagu: I tell my brother nothing! I tell him nothing!
Charles Cholmondeley: Because you know he’s a spy in bed with the Russians!


 

Ewen Montagu: Don’t you tell me what I know and don’t know. You don’t think I imagine myself at his funeral every day? My own brother, tried and hanged for treason. How f***ing dare you?
Charles Cholmondeley: I am not the one who is running a covert operation with a spy under my roof!
Ewen Montagu: No. No, your brother’s a war hero. And I envy you that.


 

Charles Cholmondeley: You are a careless b****rd, Montagu. You’re careless with Jean, you’re careless with your brother, and you’re careless with your own wife.
Ewen Montagu: I don’t need you to remind me of my sins. I only wonder how you reconcile yourself with yours.


 

Charles Cholmondeley: More than anyone else in German intelligence, Von Roenne would need to know if Mincemeat is true. So he could decide if what he’s whispering in Hitler’s ear is fact or fiction. Because Von Roenne may be the one who is fighting the other war. The secret war. The war dedicated to seeing Hitler destroyed.
Ewen Montagu: Either that’s true, or it’s a fiction that we want to be true. What’s fact is that you know I suspected my brother of spying and refused to turn him in. So, you know enough to see me ruined and my brother hanged. So the next move is yours, Charles. What’s it to be?


 

Ewen Montagu: That is our instinct.
Admiral John Godfrey: That is your instinct? The fate of the world at stake, the Nazi killing machine waiting for us on Sicily’s shores, and you two with your instinct.


 

Jean Leslie: It’ll take the grace of God and nerves of steel to land Mincemeat safely now.
Ewen Montagu: The kind of fortitude you have demonstrated every single day.
Jean Leslie: I’ve played my part in the Bill and Pam story, Ewen. It’s time for me to go where I’m needed.
Ewen Montagu: You’re needed here, with us.
Jean Leslie: I have to go.
Ewen Montagu: You will have your own story then. You will fight your own war. You will serve bravely. Our country will be lucky to have you. And I…
Jean Leslie: You will be reunited with your wife and children. A better man.
Ewen Montagu: A man you brought back to life. I will miss you so terribly.


 

Charles Cholmondeley: I may vomit.
Ewen Montagu: I may vomit with you.


 

Charles Cholmondeley: Every piece of intelligence says that the Nazis are waiting for us in Greece.
Ewen Montagu: And every piece of intelligence may be the greatest deception the Nazis have ever played against us. Why do you think Churchill still believes this can work?
Charles Cholmondeley: Because he has to.


 

Ian Fleming: It is only fitting that the two wars finally converge in darkness. The target is no longer hidden. The points are set, and the forces gather. Brave men, their lives hanging in the balance. Their fate unknowable. Their part in history unwritten. But who in these last hours will bear witness to the hidden war, unseen by history, locked away in a buried file? Its tragedies and triumphs unspoken. Its heroes unsung.


 

Ewen Montagu: In God’s name, Fleming, what are you writing?
Ian Fleming: Spy story.


 

Ian Fleming: It is in this moment, this suspended moment, that my story waits for an ending. As if fate herself were a blank page. An ending redeemed in righteousness. An ending graced with mercy. An ending filled with light.


 

Charles Cholmondeley: [referring to the telegram] Here’s another one, from Churchill. “Mincemeat swallowed. Rod, line, and sinker.”


 

Ewen Montagu: We saved some lives today.
Charles Cholmondeley: Some lives, not all.
Ewen Montagu: It can never be all.
Charles Cholmondeley: We don’t seem to have saved ourselves.
Ewen Montagu: But those that did make it…
Charles Cholmondeley: Glory will be theirs.
Ewen Montagu: As it should be. We fooled the Fuhrer, murderous b****rd. There’s some glory in that.


 

Ewen Montagu: I need to go home and finish a letter to my wife. But first, I need a drink. Let me buy you a drink.
Charles Cholmondeley: It’s eight in the morning.
Ewen Montagu: Surely someone will take us in.

 


 

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