Odette

Watched this film previously sometime in the '60s and it follows as much as we can be told about the SOE in WW2. I didn't think much of Anna Neagles French or her accent although I know her husband, Herbert Wilcox, the films Director and Producer used foreign actors wherever possible and needed a 'name' in the lead female role to carry the film. Also starred Trevor Howard, Bernard Lee, Peter Ustinov and Marius Goring and tells the story of Odette Sanson, recruited to the SOE and dropped into France. Neagle was quite the 'star' of Biopics having played Queen Victoria, Edith Cavell in film same name (Very good and historically quite accurate. Wilcox Direction is a little slow and pedantic and is the thing that really lets the film down. Another true-story is Carve her name with Pride (excellent) about Violette Szabo (played by Virginia McKenna) another SOE recruit, described as 'the bravest of them all'.

Odette Sanson is recruited by British Intelligence to spy in occupied France during World War Two.

Based on a real case. The film conveys the real danger in the French resistance of capture at any moment and the horror if you were. The prison and camp scenes are very well done too.

Anna Neagle carries the movie almost single handed. Everyone else does their fill-in character parts very well but she is the star. Despite some dodgy French accents Trevor Howard and Peter Ustinov are the best of the rest.

It would have been nice to see more of her secret service training.

Painstaking reconstruction of lost heroes of the war in an almost documentary character, in this case the French resistance organized from England with a quite ordinary woman as the main link and foundation of the operations, as she as an ordinary woman is best fit not to attract attention. When she is asked to volunteer she has no experience whatsoever, an ordinary woman with three children separated from her husband, whom we never hear a word of throughout the film. Instead there is Trevor Howard as a certain Peter Churchill as the other main link in the operations together with Peter Ustinov as the indispensable radio operator. He is caught and killed by the Gestapo, which you learn already in the beginning of the film, but you never see it happen. Instead you see the full torture sessions and ordeals of Trevor Howard and Anna Neagle.

It certainly is one of her best performances, the direction by Herbert Wilcox is completely natural all the way, and Anthony Collins has provided the film with discreet but eloquent music perfectly suited to the action; but the perhaps most interesting performance is that of the dubious Marius Goring as the Abwehr man, who like Canaris is well aware of the fallacy of Hitler's regime and continuosly seeks a way out of the war dilemma but falls in with the tragedy and must take the consquences of being part of it.

It's a gripping film of the unknown heroes of the war that never reached any public acknowledgement, while they were the ones who risked their lives more than most and often lost it. Still, this is also a film of survival against all odds by sheer obstinacy and refusal to cooperate with a dictatorship.

A British biographical drama: A story about the French widow of an English soldier who offers her services to British Intelligence who send her undercover to assist the French Resistance in Vichy France, but soon the enemy sets a trap. This gripping, moving, and grim fact-based melodrama is a daunting and vivid tale. Anna Nagle gives a fine performance, immersing herself in the role in the same way as many Method actors would do in a later generation. Trevor Howard and Peter Ustinov are equally convincing. Although the film doesn't provide much mystery, the factual elements are sensitively handled.

This film, made in 1950 was one of many made around that time to record and pay tribute to the hero(ines) of World War Two. It is amazingly unsentimental, and all the more powerful for that reason. Anna Neagle shows more emotion in the few scenes where she contacts her children than she does later when spying for the British in France. Neagle is surrounded by a galaxy of fine British actors including Trevor Howard, Bernard Lee (ironically playing the same kind of role as in his many outings in the Bond movies) and Marius Goring. I don't doubt the veracity of her exploits and she was very lucky to have survived the ordeal of her imprisonment at Ravensbruck. Neagle made many films with her husband Herbert Wilcox, this is probably one of the best, and though it is clearly a low budget film, it is none the worse for that.