Interrogatoire secret

Titre original : Circle of Deception

1960
Approved
1h 40min

NOTE IMDb

MA NOTE

Ajouter une intrigue dans votre langueUnbeknownst to him, a soldier is sent on a doomed mission because of the high likelihood of him divulging secrets if captured and tortured.Unbeknownst to him, a soldier is sent on a doomed mission because of the high likelihood of him divulging secrets if captured and tortured.Unbeknownst to him, a soldier is sent on a doomed mission because of the high likelihood of him divulging secrets if captured and tortured.

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NOTE IMDb

6,6/10

351

MA NOTE

Voir les informations de production sur IMDbPro

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6,6351

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5Chase_Witherspoon

Minor WWII melodrama

Future Mr and Mrs Bradford Dillman star in this lukewarm WW2 drama in which Dillman is enlisted by subterfuge to undertake a deadly mission behind enemy lines. Cracks appear in the plan when Parker develops feelings for the easygoing (and gullible) American soldier bringing her loyalty into question, her superior Andrews sympathetic to the ethical issues but more interested in the national interests.

Strong cast isn't given a lot of meaningful material to work with, a melodramatic, romantic B war movie in which the best role is played by Stephens as a ruthless German officer unable to break his prisoner despite increasingly brutal methods of interrogation.

Australian audiences might also be interested to see a young Norman Coburn (Mr Fisher from 'Home & Away') playing one of the innocuous British soldiers playfully ribbing Dillman at the RAF base early in the picture.

Not bad in any sense, mostly just mediocre with both the leads miscast in roles to which their apparent refinement doesn't seem well suited (Parker is perhaps too elegant to play a bland WAAF whilst Dillman too genial/ intellectual for such a dirty mission despite the mischaracterisation being central to the plot), although it is endearing to see the film which ultimately forged their lifelong union which lasted forty years.

8RanchoTuVu

psychological warfare

The British military brass led by Harry Andrews choose one of their own junior officers played by Bradford Dillman to go on a mission into Nazi-occupied France based on a psychological profile that he will crack under torture and reveal the false information they wish to have the Germans believe about the imminent D-Day invasion. Dillman is chosen for the mission on the recommendation of Suzy Parker, who plays Andrews administrative assistant. As a psychological drama Circle of Deception works fairly well. Parker is especially good at playing both ends, working to implement Andrews plan but also falling for Dillman. Dillman is good once he gets captured by the Germans, who torture him convincingly. After he breaks, Dillman's character has to live with himself, still believing that he let down the war effort by divulging true information.

10clanciai

Upsetting story of the lies of war heroism

This is a very late noir and very noir indeed, dealing with the aftermath of the war in 1946, when an earlier woman officer of intelligence tries to trace a lost war hero and finds him drinking in Tangiers. He treats her badly although they became all but lovers and tells her to go home and leave him alone - he even returns his Victoria Cross (or some medal) to her, totally bitter and disillusioned. After his bravery as a spy in France, being tortured by the Gestapo and SS and surviving it without breaking, for which he got his medal, he was sent to Burma and then was lost. But as she reappears in his life as a total surprise he starts to remember and finds it worth while to make a clean breast of what actually happened, and it is a fearful story. This is not for sensitive hearts, as the film implies a heart-breaking risk. But the story is extremely interesting and impressing, it brings oceans of afterthoughts, - mind you, it was towards the very end of the war when enterprises like Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were carried through deliberately with planned fire storms and no regard for the lives of civilians, and that mentality dominates the film, which will shock you, as it shocks Suzy Parker from beginning to end, but she fights it, and ultimately wins.

7lqualls-dchin

actually a remake of fox TV show

When 20th Century Fox entered TV in the 1950s, one of the programs was an hour-long anthology series. This series took many Fox classics (THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR, HOUSE OF STRANGERS, MIRACLE ON 34th STREET, THE LATE GEORGE APLEY, YOUNG MR. LINCOLN, et al) and reduced them to less-than-an-hour. One of the entries in that series was titled DECEPTION, and it starred Linda Darnell and Trevor Howard; it was about a woman intelligence officer in charge of a complicated spy mission: she has to pick a man who will turn out to be a coward, so that he can be given false information which he will divulge (under torture) to the Nazis. Unless i'm very much mistaken, this is one instance when the TV episode was embellished into a feature film (made in 1961). The movie provides a lot more exposition, but the story is the same, including the female intelligence officer seeking out the man after the war. This film stars Suzy Parker as the intelligence agent, and Bradford Dillman as the man; soon after this movie, they would marry and she would retire from acting. Though they don't have the same depth as Darnell (an exceptional performance) and Howard, Parker and Dillman are nevertheless quite a glamorous couple (as they were in real life).

(Though the film is well-done, the TV show, in this instance, packed more of a punch, and the performances of Linda Darnell and Trevor Howard were exceptional.)

8richardchatten

Twenty Seconds in Marignan

A harrowing drama about undercover work in wartime France carrying the fingerprints of screenwriter Nigel Balchin, whose 1949 novel 'A Sort of Traitors' he adapted the same year for the Boulting brothers as 'Suspect' (both of which were more characteristic of the Cold War thrillers that were soon to follow in droves in their lack of heroism, and in which everyone is expendable).

Told in flashback, we are already informed from the outset what is going to happen, but not how we are going arrive there, which when it comes is quite satisfactory. Suzy Parker's usual glacial exterior is here well employed (and co-star Bradford Dillman plainly succeeded in melting it, since they married in 1963). Richard Shaw and Michael Ripper appear in separate scenes as a Nazi torturer and a member of the maquis, ten years before they were reunited as heavies Ryan & Burke in the TV adventure series 'Freewheelers' (for which Ripper again wore a beret).

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Anecdotes
Bradford Dillman and Suzy Parker met on this shoot and later married.

Gaffes
When Paul Raine is remembering events that took place in the war, there is a caption "Occupied France 1944". However when a despatch rider arrives at the Combined Services Catering Research office in London, apparently in the same time period, a Morris Minor car is seen in the background. This did not start production until 1948, well after the date in that caption.

Citations
Capt. Thomas Rawson: The instructions our agent were to carry to Ballard were that on a certain day, on receipt of a certain signal, he and the Maquis were to attack all major roads and bridges in the Marignon sector. It didn't matter if they didn't destroy them so long as they attacked them. What was important was that the Germans would deduce from this attack that the invasion of France would take place in that area, thereby forcing them to hold troops there which would be more useful elsewhere.
Maj. William Spence: Well, it won't work now Ballard's arrested.
Capt. Thomas Rawson: But the Germans don't know we know that. It'll still work.
Maj. William Spence: But they have his radio.
Capt. Thomas Rawson: Yes, and they'll be sitting there, waiting for a signal. Well, we'll send them one. We'll say that one of our people is coming in with orders for Ballard. He'll land, the Germans will pick him up and try to beat out of him what those orders are.
Maj. William Spence: Plant a phony agent on them?
Capt. Thomas Rawson: So he breaks, he talks. And gives away to the Germans the plan to destroy communications in that area.
Maj. William Spence: The Maquis can't make the attack now.
Capt. Thomas Rawson: But the Germans will draw exactly the same conclusions as if they could - which is what we want.
Maj. William Spence: Would the phony agent get away with it?
Capt. Thomas Rawson: He won't know he's phony. He'll really believe he's got vital information. He'll try his hardest not to talk. Then things will get too tough for him. He won't be able to take it and he will talk.
Maj. William Spence: What, deliberately let them get a man of ours and break him?
Capt. Thomas Rawson: Yes. But he must be a man trying to do his duty; devoted, brave, utterly convincing. Well?
Lucy Bowen: He'd be a sacrifice.
Capt. Thomas Rawson: [he's handed a message] This is on Ballard's radio and in his code. The Germans don't know we know.
Capt. Thomas Rawson: Get on the phone to Holding Centre and tell Taylor we'll be down this afternoon.
Capt. Thomas Rawson: We've been trying to find men who won't crack under pressure. Now we've got to find one who will. But not too easily.