13 RUE MADELEINE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 413, 23 May 1947, Page 30

13 RUE MADELEINE

(20th Century-Fox)

NSTEAD of making films about ‘what allegedly happened on the fighting fronts during the late great war, Hollywood is now busily en-

gaged in making thrillers about what allegedly happened behind them. This new production is the third or fourth allegedly based on the exploits of agents belonging to the Office of Strategic Services; and perhaps because it was made by the same team as madé the first and best in the series The House on 92nd Street, and employs some of the same technique, it requires the use of the word "allegedly" rather less than either Cloak and Dagger and O.S.S. Even so the film is a compromise, and might have been better if it had adhered to the outright fictional methods of Cloak and Dagger or, better still, if it had adopted the documentary style of The House on 92nd Street, instead of trying to combine both approaches. For the first part, and the best part, 13 Rue Madeleine is almost straight documentary, showing with the impersonal precision of a March of Time the processes of training Allied secret agents. Pieces of newsreel and glimpses of actual’places and persons are mixed. with studio reconstructions and_ studio players, while a March of Time voice adds té6 the factual atmosphere. But when the ‘story leaves American shores for Britain we feel, strange as it may seem, that we are leaving real life behind; and when the leading characters’ take a parachute jump into Occupied Europe they come down in. what is, for. the purposes of this film, almost wholly — the realm of make-believe. At least that is the impression. Then begin in earnest the daring exploits of James Cagney and Annabella as they seek to kidnap a French collaborationist who is a top- | rank rocket scientist, and» ship him — back to England. There are desperate’ encounters with the Nazis-and with the French Underground-and the camera shows no reticence in photographing various forms of sudden death. This part of the film is as exciting as a tough spy-thriller can be, but the early ait of .verisimilitude has almost entirely vanished. The director does, however, avoid any suggestion of romantic entanglements: Cagney and Annabella are interested in one another only as fellow-workers in a hazardous enterprise, and never once exchange a tender word or a soft glance. Annabella, you feel, might be capable of it in other company, but certainly not with Cagney, who is. probably more relentlessly unsentimental as a patriot than (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) he has ever been as a gangster. It’s a good performance, especially when he masquerades as a Vichyite insurance adjuster. And the director resists with equal determination any hint of an orihodox happy ending: by a melodramatic matter of minutes, the mission of hero and heroine succeeds, but pretty soon thereafter

she is pumped full of bullets, while he, to prevent him from talking to the Gestapo under __ torture, is blown to pieces by bombs dropped by his own compatriots. MAKERS OF BRITISH FILMS ie DAVID LEAN is the British director who worked with Noel Coward on "In Which We Serve"’ (1942), "This Happy Breed" (1944), " Blithe Spirit" (1945) and "Brief Encounter" (1945). He also directed "The Way to the Stars" and the forthcoming screen version of "Great Expectations." -_-_e-e-_-oOooOO

NATIONAL FILM UNIT = FORCE IN TOKIO," an item in the National Filfn Unit's Weekly Review No. 299, released on May 23, shows how New Zealand troops in Japan spend their leave. Tokio has many interesting sights and the troops do the rounds in rickshaws. "Scouts Farewelled"’ shows the boys who are now on their way to France to the Jamboree being farewelled at Parliament House prior to embarkation; and the third item in the Review is "‘‘MotorBike Trials’ held recently in Christchurch.