Le mystère de la section 8

Vivien Leigh is beautiful and effective in her role as a spy masquerading as a Parisian dressmaker. There is requisite tension and passion in this thriller loosely-based on the real-life affair of couturiere Madeleine Cheruit and a high-ranking German officer during World War I. Another version of the story of the famous designer and her military lover is told in The Proprietor (1996)starring Jeanne Moreau.

The plot develops with just enough direction and character development to keep a general story in focus. Seemingly standard inter-war spy movie with a beautiful female spy, threatening German spies, murder, and clean cut British agents. The cast is good with Vivien Leigh and Conrad Veidt playing their roles well. The supporting cast is like many early movies, lots of professionals with good craftwork and little fame. The production is interesting look at the period and the state of movie making. The special effects are simple, but effective for their period. Obviously, in a British film the star will be pure in the end, and can not be a German agent. However, Leigh does a good job of keeping the real situation under wraps for a while. The characters take on depth, but most drop away by the end. Only the main spies from two sides are left in the center, and the romance overcomes the effects of the war. Probably during WW2, the British film industry reflected differently on the end of the movie, but it was in the can. An interesting film: fun to watch Leigh and Veidt, and a good period piece on the politics, morays, and society in neutral Sweden in WWI.

Madeleine Goddard is a spy during WWI; she is based in neutral Stockholm, where she runs a (façade) high-fashion shop with frequent contacts with Paris. All this is certain. More uncertain is her nationality (Swiss or, as seems to be stated later in the movie, French), and, above all, which country is she working for. At the beginning it's not clear, then it appears to be Germany. Then it appears not to be Germany: and, funny fact, half the User Reviews in IMDb say she works for France, half say she works for England. I will not try to settle the question: I just wanted to make clear the confusing nature of the plot.

Baron Karl von Marwitz, a German deserter, enters Sweden: he is to become the main boyfriend of Madaleine (she had another one, before, a British one, just to add to the picture!). But wait: he is not a German deserter - we learn as the movie proceeds -, but the number-one German secret service agent in Stockholm! The couple wants to escape the horrors of the war and settle in retirement in some quiet place: Madeleine suggests the French Riviera, but.. no! There he will be on enemy land. Then they agree for Lake Garda, Italy (what?! It's enemy land for him altogether!...).

The question is somewhat settled on high sea, where, together with our heroes, a German submarine, a neutral Dutch ship (that will soon raise a British flag) and some other boats meet... The movie seems to be made in earnest, and it's not bad as for visual and filmic effects: only, it is too unnecessarily complicated. A simpler treatment would have been better. My exact rating would be 5,75: six stars are the nearest approximation.

Cinema uber villain Conrad Veidt and delicate Vivien Leigh make for an odd but absorbing couple as spies on opposite sides in this suspense romance. Veidt's nefarious allure and usual commitment to cruelty is tempered long enough to get the attention of Miss Leigh and it gives the somewhat convoluted (she's a double agent) story a suspense that sustains itself up until the final moments.

Madeline Goddard (Leigh) poses as a Stockholm dress shop owner while spying for Germany in neutral Sweden. Baron Karl Von Marwitz (Veidt) arrives in Stockholm to put the war behind him and live an epicurean existence of wine women and song. He also is merely posing. Goddard and Marwitz eventually become entangled and the passion between the two distracts them momentarily from their assignments which is to expose each other.

Veidt and Leigh have some excellent scenes together fraught with suspense and romance as they parry back and forth using charm and suspicion for weapons. In spite of their contrasting stature they display a nice change of pace chemistry with director Victor Seville maintaining a degree of ambiguity with both leads late into the film as they struggle with duty and desire.

There's a rousing gun battle between a sub and disguised transport in the finale with a somewhat schmaltzy climax that hinders the film, but Veidt and Leigh create enough fireworks of their own to make Desperate Journey worth the watch.

There's not really much to this amuse-bouche of two espionage agents in Sweden during World War I. The German agent, the sophisticated and aristocratic Conrad Veidt, and the pouting delicate French agent, Vivien Leigh, are both quite good. I don't find Conrad Veidt particularly handsome but he has some properties that seem to appeal to women -- tall, polite, unspeakably rich, unflappable, and speaks with a Continental accent. He wears a monocle too, as if the rest weren't enough. I don't find him attractive but I'd like to be him.

Vivien Leigh is is a genuine stunner. There isn't a plane of her features or an angle of the camera that detracts from her beauty. She can act too. Here, she changes from curt and business-like to winsome and yearning, and she does it convincingly. Years later, as Blanche DuBois, she swooped around dressed in frills and slowly going mad in New Orleans' French Quarter. As a worn-out Southern belle, she was just as convincing. She had the misfortune of suffering for years from a disabling bipolar disorder and finally the tuberculosis that killed her.

The set design is noticeably good, even extravagant in the dining room scenes. They're enough to make any normal man's mouth water -- sitting across from a lovely woman in a fancy restaurant, drinking champagne and dreaming of Aphrodite. Yum.

The story itself left me confused. Let's see. We're most often in Stockholm during the war. There are German spies. There are French spies. There are British spies. And all of them seem to be spying on each other. It sounds practically MODERN. Vivien Leigh is a French agent. But why is she smuggling information from Paris to Sweden of all places? Why does the French spy network in Stockholm give a damn about the next German offensive. And who do they transmit it to -- French headquarters in Paris? And why does Leigh's comic janitor send secret semaphore signals out his window to someone else? When the broth is reduced, you have a tale of two lovers representing conflicting ideologies and the good one wins. "Ninotchka" did it with more flair but the intent, of course, was different. In 1937 no one in Britain was laughing much about Germany or Hitler's shenanigans.

It's in no way a bad movie. Some of the dialog is keen. In the Leigh's boutique, a dresser and a rich man's mistress have a brief exchange. Paramour: "Some men just like to buy a girl everything." Dresser: "With a girl like you, it's easy to understand why." Both the ladies giggle -- and then the mistress's grin turns into a nasty frown. Well, it loses something when it's put into print.