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Operation Secret is a tale of military murder mystery, with a little twist.

Cornel Wilde plays the protagonist, who has been charged with the murder of a French underground marquee fighter during world war II.

It begins with a number of witnesses being questioned before a military tribunal, as they seek to discover the current whereabouts of this missing soldier, who fought for the French foreign legion, before being recruited as a spy for the British marines.

Being fluent in both French and German (alongside English), he's a perfect candidate to be sent behind enemy lines as a paratrooper with an espionage mission.

However, based on some of his earlier experiences in the war, he comes into conflict with one of the man he is tasked with working with.

This man is the commander of the French Underground, who goes by the codename Torch, and has communist sympathies.

After escaping from Germany with a woman undercover as a nun, whom also turns out to be the lover of this man...their egosbegin to butt heads.

So when they disagree about what to do with a valuable roll of film, that exposes the design of the Nazi jet plane program, which they had worked together to get their hands on...things start to get heated.

And it ends up with one of their own men being murdered.

Wilde's character wants to forward the information to the Brits, so they can design their own jet planes; while torch wants to get it to the Russians, fearing that the Brits will only use the information to perpetuate their own capitalist wars.

However, when the court case brings in a surprise witness...things take a turn that noone expected.

This is a nicely constructed, and entertaining little film...but it is also very clearly anti-communist propaganda in it's most explicit form.

And that- alongside the fact that everyone speaks english even when they are supposed to be talking to one another in foreign languages- takes a way from it's over all historical value.

Making it entertaining but outdated.

6 out of 10.

There have been some outstanding movies about underground forces in Europe during WWII. There have been some excellent movies about espionage during WWII. And, there have been a number of very good movies that combine espionage and underground efforts. "Operation Secret" is far and away the very best of the latter, with a lot of intrigue and mystery tossed in. The film combines spy efforts with underground operations, and then adds some combat scenes and aerial bombing footage along with the mystery and intrigue. It involves a court inquiry after the war, and a story told in flashbacks from various characters.

Just as with "Where Eagles Dare," this film story is fictitious, but is about real subjects of the war. In the former, it was the efforts to knock out Norwegian plants before the Nazis could use them to produce heavy water for use in German nuclear arms plans. In "Operation Secret," the real subjects were Germany's V-2 rockets and jet aircraft.

This film excels in a number of areas. The plot and script are first- rate, and the acting is first-rate by the whole cast. The direction is excellent, as are the cinematography and the scenes. This may be one of Cornel Wilde's best performances, and Karl Malden gives a first-rate performance. To top it all off, the movie has some actual German footage of the V-2 rocket firings, and the actual footage of the earliest German jet aircraft tests. I recall seeing such tests only once before; so this is very rare among WWII movies.

I'm surprised that so few have seen this movie by this late date. I don't recall ever having seen it before, but I've added it to my film library. Now that it's on DVD, more folks should want to buy it. I think it's a "must" for any serious war film library. If you're not a collector, watch for its showing on TV. I highly recommend this excellent, interesting, intriguing and entertaining film. For a bit of trivia, in an early scene of a flight from New York to Paris, presumably around the time the film was made, 1952, the pilot announces over the plane's PA system that the flight will take "about 13 hours." That was the speed of the four-engine prop planes before the advent of commercial jet service.

I watched "Operation Secret" on the Fast32 streaming service (which is an excellent source of Western and war films) and was very impressed. Cornel Wilde was good enough, but Karl Malden stole the acting honours, with Steve Cochran doing well as the French resistance leader.

A couple of minor gripes: there was no way that the Resistance fighters could have filmed such close-up footage of the V1 bomber and the tunnel into the cliffs was very brightly illuminated.

Being released in 1952 the makers couldn't resist the temptation to include some anti-Communist propaganda.

But overall one of the best Resistance "B" films I've ever seen.

What a wonderful movie and what a surprise! I didn't expect much from this and the unimaginative title didn't help. I decided to give it a try because a couple of my favourite actors were in it, Steve Cochran and Karl Malden.

First a rundown of the plot. In the opening we see a couple of passenger planes converging on Paris, one from New York and one from Germany. The date is a few years after WWII and a trial is being held in Paris for the murder of a Maquis member during the war. The accused person is absent, the character played by Cornel Wilde. The witnesses are being assembled from all points of the compass, including Cochran, Malden and others, all belonging to the same French Resistance group as Wilde. From here we get a series of flashbacks as each witness tells how he or she met Wilde and their experiences during the war years. Cochran tells first how he met Wilde when they were all cornered by the Germans in 1940 in a house outside Paris. Cochran is in the French army, Wilde (an American) and Malden are Foreign Legionaries. The order from the government for French soldiers to lay down their arms and surrender comes over the radio. From this pivotal point the plot proceeds through twists and turns, always gripping us and always surprising us.

As the final titles came up I realised I'd just viewed one of the best B movies I'd ever seen. I highly recommend it to all, a brilliant little film with the ensemble cast at the top of their form. A well-deserved 8/10.

This film has all the necessary ingredients to be a good WW 2 movie. However, the script is a bit suspect from two angles; it bites off far more than it can chew, and it smacks of anti-communist sympathies; most likely because it was made during the McCarthy period of communist witch hunts.

Cornell Wilde and Karl Malden are excellent in their roles, and the storyline, if not very believable, is still quite interesting from a cinematic point of view. Wilde's character gets out of more jams than a taxi driver in Midtown New York City. However, if one can suspend disbelief, the film can be entertaining.