Les héros dans l'ombre

Alan Ladd (John Martin) is trained as an OSS agent and sent on an assignment in France with a team of 3 others. Their leader Don Beddoe (Gates) is killed early on and Ladd is put in charge. The mission is to blow up a bridge and report back on German troop numbers and movements. Their boss Patric Knowles (Commander Brady) then flies into France to tell Ladd that he has one more mission to complete.

This spy story is a bit long but it holds the interest well enough. The main bulk of the film takes place in France and by the end of the film only one of Ladd's group remains alive - we watch them get caught one by one. You can see how the film is going to end from about halfway through when Geraldine Fitzgerald (Elaine) tells Ladd not to come back to save her life if he feels that she is in danger. I felt that she was just as strong a character as he was in the lead role. There are some good moments during the film, eg, when Beddoe gets caught at a cafe and signals to Fitzgerald to leave.

Overall, despite the length of it, the film is made up of entertaining segments, and I enjoyed watching it the second time more than the first.

Liked this film. Its practically a film about what would becomes as the CIA. Four new agents try to get secrets across france but are slowly gets caught, one by one. As each try to survive, each mission seems to gets murkier by the minute.

I would say it was a nice surprise to see a film that talks openly about espionage AND how it is deployed. I just wished the lady character could have been played better AND is played less frustrated. She gives too tense vibes for an espionage film. Alan Ladd is not really that much of an actor either but works well as a straight man but is much believable as a man trying to keep his head afloat. The tension too is not as build up as I would have liked .

Otherwise, other than that seemingly from war attacking sequence, which was wonderful. There is nothing really to write about it. Just random fun facts like the writer for this film would serve as a writer for some of the Bond films.

Fine film.

This film, shot soon after WWII's conclusion, starts out in a semi-documentary fashion, with that time period's usual background commentary, this time applied to the nascent stages of the O.S.S. and how its development would enhance the war effort. However, as the core unit gets trained, it shifts to a pretty decent spy drama, with Alan Ladd and Ms. Fitzgerald taking the leads in their unit's task, which inherently was to supply the Allies with German armored division positions and to facilitate the explosion of a railroad tunnel which had been providing the Germans with their main conduit for battle preparations.

Ladd's gender-biased character doesn't like the fact that he has to work with a woman on such a trying mission, but Ms. Fitz's character isn't falling for his hype, and she soon shows her mettle by performing her assigned tasks more than adequately. It is in this dialog between our two major protagonists that we see just how well our stars (and writers/director) handled their roles. Crisp, articulate dialog sets the pace for their encounters, which was coupled with an intelligent story line, whose development was duly enhanced by the supporting actors as well.

But as my summary title indicates, our "hero" isn't really the prototypical war hero you were used to seeing in movies of that era. Our man Ladd is asked to perform one more task by his CO and he "bites the guy's head off" with a "why me?" diatribe reminiscent of a film more ensconced in the anti-war movies of the 60's-70's. It is Ladd at his vitriolic best, barking at the CO to get somebody else, but the CO has to finally give him an official order, to which Ladd reluctantly assents. This scene ever so realistically shows the reactions of a real human soldier as opposed to some sort of Hollywood hero fabrication.

Other moments of pathos and reality occur, especially between "Sparky" and the unit's radio operator. John Hoyt's fine contribution as the German colonel also merits mentioning.

Although it may not rank amongst your all time favorites list, watch it anyway and if you don't have at least a small well of tears at the film's conclusion... Just maybe "she could have been a girl from around the corner!"

The Office of Strategic Services was formed when Franklin Roosevelt decided once and for all we needed a separate intelligence organization if in fact we were going into World War II. And in the postwar era we needed one to compete with both friends and enemies who had been at this for centuries more than we had.

During the war the cloak of secrecy was firmly wrapped around the OSS, but after VJ Day a whole bunch of films came out about some of their behind the lines spy missions. The best of these films were Cloak and Dagger, 13 Rue Madeleine and OSS.

This film follows the training and then the missions in occupied France of a team of OSS operatives, code-named Applejack and their controller. The controller is Patric Knowles and the operatives are Alan Ladd, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Don Beddoe, and Richard Benedict.

It's a tough dirty job with a chance of survival not real great, but this team does its job. Geraldine Fitzgerald engages in a little Mata Hari activity with a German colonel played by John Hoyt and proves quite the temptress.

Actor Joseph Crehan plays William J. Donovan briefly in the beginning of the film. Donovan, a Republican, was named by President Roosevelt to organize and head the new agency. He had a colorful career both in peace and war and was previously played by George Brent in Warner Brothers, Fighting 69th. He's worthy of a biographical film himself and I wonder why none has ever been done before.

Alan Ladd is his stalwart best. Heroics he does, but they are believable heroics. One of his best films from his Paramount era period.

Done in semi documentary style I enjoyed this film and it was not done too sentimentally which it would have been easy to slip in to. The Nazi were not portrayed as being particularly nasty, not nice of course but not very nasty as is common in a lot of WWII films. In the trivia section it's mention that Alan Ladd's character's height is give on his OSS record card as 5' 10" but it's actually given as being 5' 10 1/2", Mr Ladd being only 5' 6". Mr Ladd's films have an extra dimension in spotting the efforts made to avoid his lack of height being obvious. A lot of sitting and kneeling down goes on in his films to avoid him being on the same level as others on screen with him.