Secret People

Secret People (1951)

A British production, and very much about their view on the coming of World War II. It's gritty, interwoven with several main characters, and fairly dark.

The film is a kind of revisiting of the build up to the war from one small personal point of view, filled with intrigue and international mixing. There are migrants and immigrants and a growing threat of an unnamed evil (though swastikas do appear in some inserted footage). It's complicated and exciting. Some key scenes happen early on in the 1937 Paris Exposition. It whispers and then it shouts. Most of the action is in mysterious London.

The key actor, in my view, is Serge Reggiani, who is Louis, the evil foreigner up to disrupt the uneasy peace still alive in London. He has a subtle touch to his sinister intentions, and it lifts the movie up. The actual main character is also excellent, the tortured and trapped Maria played by another Italian actor, Valentina Cortese.

It might be easy to look back at these times from more than a decade later. But it isn't easy to make it fresh, and to keep the tension make sense. Of course, now it is 60 years later and it becomes more of a drama with historical roots that have to be told by the movie, not assumed. At times the movie pulls this off with surprising sharpness. As the police get involved, it gets curiously complicated, good guys vs. bad guys, with no one quite fitting the clichés of other movies. The idea here is that the enemy is unexpected, and everywhere.

It should be mentioned that we have Audrey Hepburn, whose first movie appearance was just one year earlier. She's not quite the Audrey we all know, but almost. Briefly. Great to see.

The more I watched this movie the more I liked it. It might be an underrated gem in some ways. There is so much going on and really dramatic filming with often nearly pitch black scenes, inside or out.

A final note. A chap at one point says, surprised, "A London girl made good coffee." How times have changed.

Valentina Cortese, daughter of pacifist anti-fascist, makes the best of exile in England with sister Audrey Hepburn. When the strongman who killed her father comes to England, will she resist the entreaties of her father's political friends to help them, or will she join THE SECRET PEOPLE? This is quite a good film -- but it is much more a character study of a woman who suddenly finds her ideals and her peace of mind threatened because of her position - then it is a straightforward spy vs spy drama. Audrey Hepburn, on the cusp of stardom, is given a role that highlights her talents without taxing her abilities. (She plays young and dangerously innocent beautifully. Her ability to do this is what makes the end of the film work.) But the movie rests on the ability of Valentina Cortese to seem intelligent but scared, vulnerable and terribly conflicted. This is a really good role that gets a really good performance.

Is this a classic for the ages? Not quite -- I like the characterization of one of the commenters as "near masterpiece". There's a deliberate lack of suspense in the film -- the results of one of the key actions in the film is so telegraphed in advance that the sequence surrounding it might be the dullest patch of the film, and the build up to the final climax is oddly lacking. But, if you have a dog- eared copy of Conrad's Secret Agent, you'll recognize the dark but dowdy milieu, and appreciate that Ealing's dedication to the use of location filming is put to good -- if very un-Ealing like -- use here.

Worth the time.

The Secret People is worth seeing as much for what it did not accomplish as for what it did. It seems to me that only Hitchcock's Sabotage deals with the same sort of moral dilemmas that this film attempts to portray. Both Sabotage and Secret People were filmed in dark London streets and ominous back streets. In fact, the cinematography is literally so dark that it is often difficult to make out the action. In both films, an atmosphere of dread and secrecy hangs over the characters. However, despite the strong bond between the sisters, you never feel the same anguish shown in Sabotage by the wife of the saboteur. The film could have been a lot more forceful in setting up its moral conflicts. Of course, it is worth while just to see the young Audrey Hepburn dance classical ballet, something we were never to see again on film. And to see her before she became a major star. No Givenchy fashions in this one!

Valentina Cortese here delivers an inspired performance as a refugee from either Italy or Spain who flees to London in the late 1930s with her younger sister because their father has been assassinated by the dictator who has taken over their country, modelled on General Franco. She takes refuge with Anselmo, a family friend who runs a London café. We skip forward by several years and the sister is now played by the young and charming Audrey Hepburn, who gets to do some of her ballet dancing in the film. All should be well, but it isn't. Anselmo decides to take the two gals to Paris for a weekend, and there they meet 'Louie', Valentina's lost love from Italy. He has become a member of the terrorist underground and is trying to assassinate his country's dictator, who is about to visit London where there will be a chance at a garden party. Louie has changed, become hardened and ruthless, and he uses the sweet-natured Valentina and her love for him as the means to get to London and ends up persuading her to carry a small bomb into the garden party, where it misfires and kills a waitress. She is arrested and blurts everything out to Scotland Yard. The terrorist group will kill anyone who spills the beans, so Scotland Yard have to give her an assumed identity and she is not allowed to see her beloved sister again. Everything gets more and more harrowing, and unlike Valentina's far-fetched previous film, HOUSE ON TELEGRAPH HILL (1951, see my review), the story here is very convincing. We begin to realize how one toe in the water in such cases can easily lead to you drowning! Serge Reggiani makes a very powerful Louie, who is able to manipulate people and make them do what he wants. Irene Worth makes an early and sympathetic film appearance as a police woman. This film is very well written and directed by Thorold Dickinson and is something of a lost gem which has fortunately now been issued on DVD.

This is a seriously under-rated work of classical British film art on a compelling subject and is as relevant to London life today as it ever was. Considering this film was released in 1952 it explores so perceptively the path from praiseworthy ideology, through working for a noble cause, into terrifying involvement in an act of pure terrorism. Right through you are steadily but inexorably drawn with a lure of truth and justice, into a slowly evolving web of intrigue, conspiracy and ultimately murder, and it leaves you wondering at which point do you actually stray from idealism and decency into cold depravity? Given the '50s context, centred on an urban minority family, the actual plot is still frighteningly relevant and this film is surely just waiting for a re-make to bring it chillingly up to date. Until then, if you can find a copy of this film, watch it - its a vital and absorbing education, in the grand old style, on the strong subject of ideology.