so, how do you speak of the film without a spoiler?

It's certainly an interesting reading of the film, and, as I say, not one I have ever heard anyone else make. Not any of the film-makers (not Powell himself, nor Pressburger but quite a few of the others, actors & crew), not any of the academics or reviewers or fans who have written about it.

Of course that's not to say you're wrong. It is a perfectly valid reading, but how accurate is it?

First, the soldier disembarks the train alone, not realizing what is going on.

He's not alone, he's not even the only one to have got off the train there. Bob Johnson mis-hears the porter when he calls out "Canterbury next stop" thinking that this is Canterbury. Peter Gibbs has already got off the train there because he's going to Chillingbourne camp.

Bob doesn't realise what's going on because he's a stranger in a strange land. One of the first American G.I.s to arrive in Britain at the start of the build up to D-Day.

The woman has a foreign substance in her hair she can't get out. Sticky, like glue, put there by a "pixie" like character, very similar to what you may feel if you suddenly had debris from an explosion in your hair before you died.

It's also sticky like another substance that a man can deposit in a woman's hair

An earlier version of the script had the attacker slashing the dresses of the girls. But that was thought to be too weird, even for The Archers, so they settled for the glue.

What sort of explosion leaves a sticky debris in your hair? Remember that the other girls that Alison meets had also had an encounter with "The Glue Man".

The pixie like character ...

He has also been likened to "Puck of Pook's Hill" from the Kipling stories - which were a favourite of the young Michael Powell. But being pixie-like doesn't mean that he represents death. There are other pixies.

The stark cryptlike confines of the magistrate's office.

That's a very realistic re-creation of the interior of the Town Hall at Fordwich. It's the smallest town hall in Britain, so small that they couldn't film in there even with B&W cameras, what with all the lights and generators that they would need - so they re-built the interior of the town hall in the studio.

The door he unlocks to show the uniforms on the floor. Two of them. There are two soldiers who entered the town on this occassion.

It's a cupboard where he keeps his uniform, and a spare

The inscription I can't make out, but it says something about "Earth" in his office.

The inscription is on the wall in the real town hall, just below King Charles II's Coat of Arms. It is on the pleading bar in the film.
It says "Love and honour the truth"

The fire watch. We know what that means.

Yes, it means watching out for fires
During the blitz, the bombing by the Luftwaffe, they used to drop incendiary bombs as well as high explosive bombs. Citizens used to take it in turn to do fire watching duty. As soon as an incendiary bomb was spotted they would rush to extinguish it before the fire started to take hold and burn the building.

I think this one is a clincher. When the soldier has been hanging out with the girl all day, he asks what color her hair is. He didn't know she was blonde. They're clearly seeing each other as spirits.

He's a man. He's not very observant as to what colour a girl's hair is. When he asks her it's dark so he has to ask her.

In the end, she finds herself able to reunite with a dead soldier. If that isn't being hit on the head with a hammer, what is?

She wasn't reunited with a dead soldier. Her airman fiancée had been reported "Missing, believed killed". He turned up safe and sound in Gibraltar. It happened like that sometimes in the fog of war.

Everything is made right. The smoke that fills the room and seems to choke the one soldier who has a second of unforgiveness.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Do you mean the caravan after Alison is told that Geoffrey is alive? She rushes back into the caravan so that it'll be ready for when he returns. But the moths are eating the curtains. As she shakes them out we see moths flying around. Not smoke.

Characters just keep magically appearing into places. And to top it all off, at the end, the soldiers march first into the cathedral, representing the fallen soldiers, perhaps that day, followed, and if you notice, they are followed reluctantly, by the people standing in the cathedral, civilian casualties.

The soldiers are about to head off for D-Day. They know that some of them won't come back so they have a church service before they go. A very common situation, even today. The people standing watching are their friends and relations as well as the people off the town, wanting to wish them well.

It's an interesting idea and you're perfectly entitled to your opinion. But as I said at the start, you are the only person I've heard of who has thought this in the 60+ years since it was made and all of your "proofs" are easily explained.

But The Archers did love multiple layers of meaning in their films. That's what makes them so fascinating and so endlessly re-watchable. I'll offer some of these thoughts to other people I know who know and love the film as much as I do

Steve

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