clanciai They are all in it, James Mason, Michael Wilding, Hugh Williams, Stewart Granger and even Herbert Lom as the one German officer who is not a complete caricature, and the glorious ingenious music adds to the general flavour of good humour and fresh spirits, which was needed in the darkest year of the war, 1942. It's war propaganda, of course, but not as daft as it looks from the start. There are some excellent scenes, and you don't always hear James Mason with a French accent complaining about English food in preference of the French kitchen. There are a number of bottles in the film, and some are even opened, but the only wines served is the champagne for the Germans. James Mason is about to relish a well preserved bottle of Calvados hidden from the Germans when the party is interrupted by an unnecessary argument. It all ends up with some real banging and bombing in the end, when the Germans really are blowing it, providing a grand finale, raising the film from a trifle to some interesting entertainment. The best scene is the exciting moment when Michelle is listening to the British broadcast and the Germans barge in just in the right moment when Hitler is speaking - but only as an example of German propaganda shown by BBC, but the Germans leave Mademoiselle with respect and full of admiration for her German loyalty.As an entertainment it's well worth seeing, and James Mason never fails to make any film he is in interesting enough to keep you awake all the way.

mark.waltz As if the writers took a "paint by number" book to create the screenplay, all the clichés of World War II "why we fight" stories are present in this tale of the French resistance. What makes it a bit more interesting is the presence of James Mason and Michael Wilding before them became Hollywood film stars. Mason gets a French accent (which sometimes sounds German) but Wilding gets to be totally British. Most of the French characters speak with a British dialect which makes Mason's accent more obvious. The only real interesting plot development concerns secret resistance members who obviously had slowly won the confidence of the Germans but were secretly working against them, making them enemies of their own people until that is exposed. Of course, you can't help but root for the resistance and cheer every time the Nazis are foiled and land back on their axis. It is obvious that this type of film cheered up the Allies enormously during the war and left them satisfied and motivated when they left the theater.

max von meyerling I'm sure that viewed during the war it was taken seriously but viewed today, with a critical eye, and I don't mean an aesthetic eye, its absurdity is what is called camp. It was only watching this film that I realized that the British TV series 'allo! 'allo! (1982-1992) was a broad parody. The central characters are two veddy veddy British chaps in trench coats wandering around in and out of the woods. Always in their trench coats. There's the cafe run by a Cockney in a beret always at odds with his wife. All we need is for the local flick to drop by and say "Good moaning". Even though people took this seriously at the time it boggles the mind to think people could really believe espionagewas actually conducted this way. For fans of the TV series this is a must not miss. I just wonder how stoned Croft and Lloyd were after seeing this film on TV 30+ years after having seen it in a West End cinema and realizing how absurd it all was and how they didn't notice 30 years before.

Robert J. Maxwell An impressive cast: James Mason, Michael Wilding, Stewart Granger, Karel Stepanek, inter alia. And that's about it for the good parts.Even the cast can't lift this wartime espionage thriller above the routine. James Mason is a splendid actor but should have stayed away from any role calling for a foreign accent. In "The Desert Rats" he mangled German. Here he does to a French accent what the Luftwaffe did to Stalingrad.Michael Wilding sounds positively uncomfortable with his working-class London locutions. Karel Stepanek, who made virtually a career out of playing Nazis, at least SOUNDS right but the role seems to have come by way of a cookie cutter. What a stereotype. I can't blame the writers too much, though -- this being written in 1942, a bad year for the Allies.Let's say this is an historical curiosity. The future held better things for most of the people involved in this low-budget thriller.