13 rue Madeleine

I liked this movie. The plot concerns James Cagney as an OSS Type agent (I believed that for some reason the producers of this movie could not actually reference the term OSS). Cagney is one of the chief instructors in a US spy school (all the action happens in World War Two). Cagney finds out there is a top German agent going through this school. Cagney decides to let the German agent finished the training course and let him (German agent) parachute into occupied France (so the enemy agent will give the Germans false information). All this happens shortly before D-Day. However, the operation goes sour and Cagney has to parachute in to try to save the day.

I won't comment anymore on the plot as to not spoil the movie.

Probably the best World War Two spy/counterspy movies I have seen. I rate it high marks, very high marks indeed.

Although Jimmy Cagney is the star of this film, he really takes a back seat during most of the picture. Instead, the story focuses on a team of OSS operatives as they are trained and then deposited behind enemy lines (FYI--the OSS was the precursor for the CIA). I especially liked watching how they were trained to blend in--such as learning to eat European-style (with the fork ALWAYS in the left hand). Cagney is ever-present during this training process and only comes to the forefront again when the mission appears to start unraveling and he goes in to rescue the team members. In between, the film centers on the team members and their efforts to destroy the nazi menace in France.

Biggest pluses--excellent writing, pacing and acting (in that order).

James Cagney stars in "13 Rue Madeleine," a routine WW II spy drama also starring Richard Conte, Annabella, and a several familiar faces in smaller roles: Sam Jaffe, Karl Malden, and E.G. Marshall. Done in semidocumentary style, Cagney plays the head of a U.S. spy cell, but the cell is known to have a Nazi in its midst. He is not eliminated so that he can be fed the wrong date for D-Day. When he kills one of the other spies, Cagney has to go in as a replacement.

Despite some nice performances, notably from Cagney and Conte, the film under Henry Hathaway's direction was quite slow; he was lumbered with a script where it was difficult to develop any feelings for most of the characters, as they were underdeveloped. There were some good scenes, particularly the ones with Jaffe's character and the French resistance. Darryl F. Zanuck brought the pretty, petite Annabella over from France to star her in films, unaware that she would fall in love with his top male star, Tyrone Power. When he tried to discourage the relationship by sending her back to France to do some films, she refused to leave her man, thus finishing her as far as Zanuck was concerned. It's a shame because although you can't tell in this movie, Annabella was an excellent actress, as she would prove on the stage. It's fun to see Karl Malden and E.G. Marshall in small parts.

The end of the film is powerful, but I prefer "OSS," also a small, semidocumentary film - catch that one if you have a chance.

Very interesting war drama starring James Cagney as a secret agent that has to infiltrate Nazi headquarters and double cross an enemy spy that has slipped into his own unit. The discovery of a German missile site location is the main objective. Cagney is air lifted into France and has trouble convincing French freedom fighters that he is there to loosen the Nazi strangle hold.

The cast is full of fine players: Richard Conte, Sam Jaffe, E.G. Marshall, Red Buttons, Karl Malden, Roland Winters and the lovely Annabella.

A great black and white flick evocative of the 40s. Catch it on AMC.

13 Rue Madeleine (1947)

This movie starts slowly and gets gradually better as it goes, until a gripping final half hour and a shocking, dramatic ending. So it's worth the ride, and worth seeing James Cagney who is at the top of his game here (he is about to make his masterpiece, White Heat, after 15 years of gangster portrayals.) Of course here his tough guy persona is put to use for the good of us all, a patriot training a group of high level war time spies. The Nazis are brutal, and World War II is unrelenting, so even this highly skilled people die. It's a reminder how tragic the war was. It is made to be exciting and even fascinating, but most of all dangerous.

Though purely fiction, for legal reasons (the pre-CIA OSS spy organization didn't want too much revealed in the movie), the filming is meant to seem realistic in a documentary way, and it begins with an authoritative voice-over and what looks like some vintage footage. This "information" is given for too long a time, and if you are not a war expert, or even know what WWII was all about, this will be too gripping. But eventually the leads all start to take on real roles, and they move from their training in the U.S. (it was filmed in Quebec City, actually), to behind enemy lines. This is then really great stuff.

Director Henry Hathaway followed this same format (even with the title) in the 1945 The House on 92nd Street and it has some of the same flaws, and the same kind of superb second half. And a year later he did a third in the same mode, Call Northside 777. It was a successful formula for a public learning about its own federal level spy and police forces, Hathaway was a really good director, and we all wish he had taken these films in the direction of Kiss of Death, which is a gem, but he didn't, probably because of producers with ideas of their own, and so we have this trio of offbeat films with only parts that are amazing. Which isn't so bad.