Héroes anónimos

In 1943 a miscellaneous group of women and men of several nationalities prepare in London to be parachuted into Belgium. They are to lead sabotage operations against the occupying German forces. A government office is destroyed, a traitor is discovered, one of their number is captured and rescued, several of them die, two fall in love.

This is a classic British WWII adventure, exploiting the potential for romance of the Special Operations Executive, notwithstanding its marginal affect on the conduct of the war. The acting is good, with Simone Signoret very beautiful and suitably soulful, Gordon Jackson playing a characteristically shaky personality and Robert Beatty in a fine, solid role as the saboteur-priest. James Robertson-Justice, of course, plays himself, as always. The plot is a disappointment. The story line does not appear clearly until the second half of the film, after a series of scenes in which the members of the team are assembled and there is a series of half-hearted attempts to establish their backgrounds and motivation. The amateurishness reinforces a certain stereotype of the British people and the lamentable lack of security awareness makes one cringe. Despite the drawbacks, this film is well done and a pleasure to watch.

Two years before Odette and a decade before Carve her Name with Pride, this film imagines a Special Operations Executive mission in Belgium. The SOE is not identified by name, and seems to be operating from a room inside the Natural History Museum instead of an office building on Baker Street, but many of the other elements are there - training in a country house, techniques of maintaining cover while on mission, and parachute jumps. There is even a workshop devising clever ways of concealing explosives - including dead rats and horse manure. Interesting to see so soon after the war what aspects of SOE, still now cloaked in secrecy more than half a century later, were seemingly well known. The workshop is also clearly a cinematic ancestor of Q's gadget factory in the Bond movies. One of the true to life aspects of this well scripted and directed (by Charles Crichton, better known for comedies The Lavender Hill Mob and The Titchfield Thunderbolt) film is the danger of being an agent in occupied Europe. Networks are vulnerable to betrayal (and one of the group we are introduced to in training turns out to be passing secrets to the Germans via an Irish contact) and the Gestapo are everywhere. People die, quite a lot of them, and suddenly. There is some dubious licence (Simone Signoret as Michèle operates a radio hidden in a sewing machine, which surely would have been vulnerable to detection, while John Slater as Emile has plastic surgery so effective his wife does not recognise him), but the story, while the characters and their mission are fictitious, seems to be informed by recent experience of the secret world. It is also ironic and poignant, in times of Brexit, to see again the common purpose of a bunch of foreigners in wartime England and the mortal risks they are prepared to take to liberate Europe from the Nazis. The women take roles equally as important as the men; which Gordon Jackson's character, who is drafted in from the explosive factory, is a bit stuffy about. Robert Beatty plays Father Elliot, a French-Canadian Catholic priest who is sent in to Belgium liberate an agent called Andrew (played by the Austrian actor Peter Illing) who has been caught after blowing up an archive office. James Robertson Justice, who would later play a similar role in The Guns of Navarone, is the mastermind in the museum back in London. His description of what his group does is as good a description of SOE as you get in movies portraying its activities: 'We collect all kinds of queer fish in this organisation, people who would never be taken for saboteurs. We send them back to school to learn all the things they were thrashed for - cheating and deceiving, pretending to be everything they are not. Playing rough games and dirty tricks.' Maurice Buckmaster, head of SOE in France who appears at the beginning of Odette, could hardly have put it better. The dramatic licence of the conclusion stretches credibility a bit far, and the constant background music gets a bit overpowering at times. But the strong cast of actors get well developed and believable characters to work with and Against the Wind is one of the better examples of its genre, even though it is one of the first.

This unusual but typically low-key product from Ealing Studios (best-known for a series of classic comedies made between 1946-1955) is a semi-documentary depiction of the saboteur training undergone by a band of hand-picked civilians and their subsequent missions behind enemy lines; therefore, in both theme and quality, it anticipates the later, more acclaimed Hollywood offering DECISION BEFORE DAWN (1951) which, incidentally, I just caught up with a couple of weeks ago. The cast is mostly made up of the usual familiar British faces (James Robertson Justice, Gordon Jackson, Jack Warner, Robert Beatty, etc.) but 2 major roles are, very effectively, portrayed respectively by French and Canadian actors: Simone Signoret (appearing in her first English-speaking film when on the verge of attaining stardom on her home ground) and Paul Dupuis. Being in this company, there cannot fail to be lighter moments – especially during an early sequence where our heroes are being shown the tools of their trade i.e. booby-trapped dead rats, manure and even sausages! – among the continuous perils and occasional tragedies they have to face away from home (including being forced to cold-bloodedly execute a compromised companion and swallow the omnipresent suicide pill to escape torture at the enemy's hands).

Surprisingly tense account of allied forces operating behind enemy lines in WWII France, infiltrating enemy strongholds and generally destabilising the occupation in collaboration with resistance fighters. Canadian Robert Beatty and Scot Gordon Jackson are the principals protagonists, teaming up with Simone Signoret in an elaborate game of cross and double cross, evading the Germans while they attempt to rescue one of their own.

Great cast with Jack Warner as the convivial commando (belying his autumn age), while Jackson and Beatty are the more intense agents, the former engaging in a rather unlikely romance with Signoret's character, herself a highly capable spy and willing to pull the trigger as required. Burly JRJ is the puppet master overseeing the covert operations, while Paul Dupuis has a memorable role as a turncoat doing everything he can to aid and abet the allied rearguard.

There's two or three very memorable moments in this film, and a relative surfeit of violence for its late-forties vintage - the Signoret-Warner scene is quite brutal and unexpected. Good use of sets and exteriors, and while there's a few clichés, I found it quite an addictive film that holds the attention pretty well.

I am a great fan of WWII movies, especially the ones concerning the resistance. To me, there is nothing better than a good film about the underground - British, Dutch, French, whatever, and "Against The Wind" is a good one. It takes a while to get going; there are many scenes setting up the planned rescue in Belgium and some time is spent on character development. A team of five are in the plan, and, of course, one is a double agent working for the Nazis.

As in many such movies, the Nazis are slow-witted bumblers, which always adds to my enjoyment even if a caricature. The action here is fast-paced and is in the second half of the picture and is one reason for my rating. The other reason is Simone Signoret, who I consider the best actress to ever grace the silver screen. She is aided and abetted by an able cast including Robert Beatty, Jack Warner and Gordon Jackson. If you are a fan of spy movies you should catch this one.