O.S.S.

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 389, 6 December 1946, Page 32

O.S.S.

(Paramount)

HIS title, as I expect you realise, is mot a cry for help, nor has it anything to do with women’s foundation garments. Possibly it was the

‘deliberate intention of the studio to make it a teaser, and it may be in furtherance of this aim (or is it because of some.curious form of snobbery?) that

in the theatre. advertisements the title is being consistently translated as "Officers’ Strategic Services." However, you probably don’t need to be told that it stands for "Office of Strategic Services," the organisation responsible during ‘the war on the American side for all kinds of hair-raising espionage and sabotage activities behind the enemy lines: and. the film clearly attempts to do for this organisation what The House on 92nd Street did for the F.B.I. The attempt, for largely avoidable reasons, does not succeed. The material was there readymade, s0 the fault clearly lies with the treatment, which turns what should have been a convincing and exciting documentary drama into just another Hollywood spy thriller. Everybody knows, or should know having been told so often, that fact can be as exciting as fiction, and I do not therefore presume to challenge the authenticity of the events in this picture. I would not dare anyway, in the face of the endorsement from the head of O.S.S., Major William J. Donovan, and that imposing list of seven O.S.S_ technical consultants who worked with Paramount. But one is entitled to comment on the remarkably convenient way (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) in which fact in this story doés correspond exactly with Hollywood’s brand of fiction, even to the extent of supplying a love-interest and leading the characters into a number of situations worthy of Hitchcock. At the beginning, the handsome chief of O.S.S. (Patric Knowles), selecting a team for espionage work in France, says "We need a fourth," and somebody suggests, "How about a woman? You need someone to contact the French Underground"-and so there we are with a heroine, Geraldine Fitzgerald, to accompany the hero, Alan Ladd, through many a hair-breadth escape from the Gestapo, supply the element of romantic conflict (Mr. Ladd at the outset has a very masculine attitude towards the equality of the sexes), and provide for the dawning of true love. The only slight departure from normal Hollywood procedure is that.the heroine doesn’t end in the hero’s arms but in front of a German firing-squad. %* * * AVING frequently suffered the mortification during the war of seeing its initials interpreted by an ignorant and

irreverant public as Oh So Social, the O.S.S. doubtless wanted in this picture to prove that it did a really useful job of work and that America could compete at the cloak-and-dagger game with any other country, Certainly Mr. Ladd and his colleagues, including the fair Miss Fitzgerald, give every indication of being tough and enterprising customers. However, as somebody has pointed out, such films as O.S.S. and The House on 92nd Street, with their candid revelation of the tticks of the U.S. espionage and counter-espionage trade, are going to make things rather difficult for any practitioners in the future. Or are these films to be taken as an encouraging sign that the U.S.A. has come out from behind false whiskers for good, and having pensioned off its secret agents is now going to rely entirely on open diplomacy and the United Nations? O.S.S. certainly gives the show away about a lot of things, and the scenes in which it does so, particularly at the start, are the best in the film; but it also conveys the suggestion, unfortunately probably as. unwarranted as the one immediately above,

that it was comparatively easy for American spies and saboteurs to pull the crepe-hair over the Nazis’ eyes-to learn their most closely-guarded secrets by bribing the Gestapo, join their army in disguise, keep in constant radio com-_ munication with headquarters in England, and blow up one of the enemy’s most vital tunnels by the device of presenting a Nazi colonel with a bust of himself modelled in dynamite! I’m. not saying that these things weren’t done, but the film makes the job look too simple. As usual, Alan Ladd maintains a practically immobile countenance in nearly every situation that confronts him. This produces the required air of resolute efficiency for the character of the hero, but it does not produce great acting. In fact, I regret to say that by far the best performance in the film is given not by any of the heroic Allies, but by a nasty, mercenary Gestapo agent, portrayed by Harold Vermilyea. This gentleman is new to me, but I look forward to meeting him again soon.