La belle espionne

A panoramic adventure during the Napoleonic Wars set on location in Guernsey , the Channel Islands , near the coast of France in the year 1800 , where fishermen, prevented by war from following their usual livelihood turned to other occupations . Gilliatt (enjoyable hero Rock Hudson) along with his partner (Bryan Forbes , subsequently a good filmmaker) are two fisherman-turned-smugglers on the agree to transport a gorgeous woman (an attractive Ivonne De Carlo) to the French coast in the year 1800 . The smuggler Gilliatt finds himself falling in love for her and they come together but he feels betrayed when he later aware this woman is a countess helping Napoleon scheme an invasion of England and the nasty Fouche (Brunius who gets all the best lines and makes the most of them) pursues his beautiful bride-to-be .

This exciting story packs sea romance , thrills , spectacular struggles , intrigue , and lots of gutsy adventure . Brawling , sprawling , almost primitive action in cracking pace , teeming across the screen . Raoul Walsh demonstrates a special talent for making the densest action sequences seem uncomplicated and uncluttered and his characters , like the scenes distinguished , often have an unfettered , raw power . Developed in untroubled-gusto and hardly seems to matter that many scenes are inexplicable . The movie marked the third teaming of director Raoul Walsh with star Rock Hudson who worked together on ¨Horizons West¨ and ¨Lawless breed¨, they would work together again on ¨Gun fury¨, their fourth and final movie together . Gorgeous Ivonne De Carlo as a spy who bears a mysterious past , she does an enjoyable and prominent acting . Good secondary cast with familiar hearted features as Maxwell Reed as Rantaine , Denis O'Dea as Lethierry , Michael Goodliffe as Ragan , Bryan Forbes as Willie , Jacques B. Brunius as Fouche , Arthur Wontner as Baron De Baudrec and special appearance of Gérard Oury as Napoleon . Colorful cinematography by Wilkie Cooper , filmed on location in Channel Islands ,Concarneau, Finistère, France and Nettlefold Studios, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England, UK . Spectacular and evocative musical score by Richard Addinsell .

The motion picture produced by David Rose was well directed by Raoul Walsh . From his starts in the silent cinema he achieved successful films until the 50s and forward , early 60s , when he was less dominant , but is still stayed lots of lusty adventure , stories of comradeship and friendship , and Raoul makes the most of plentiful action scenes . Walsh was an expert director of all kind genres but with penchant in Western as ¨Colorado territory¨ , ¨They died with their boots on¨, ¨Along the great divide¨, ¨Saskatchewan¨, ¨King and four queens¨ , ¨The sheriff of fractured jaw¨, ¨A distant trumpet¨ ; Adventure as ¨Thief of Bagdad¨, ¨Captain Horatio Hornblower¨, ¨World in his hands¨, ¨Blackbeard the pirate¨ ; Warlike as ¨Objetive Burma¨ , ¨Northern pursuit¨, ¨Marines let's go¨ ; and Noir film as ¨White heat¨, ¨High Sierra¨, ¨They drive by night¨, ¨The roaring twenties¨. Rating : Fairly straightforward movie and acceptable flick . This briskly-realized action film makes it of the various of Raoul Walsh genre entries being worthwhile watching .

New top Universal Pictures leading man Rock Hudson was sent on a loan out to RKO to co-star with Yvonne DeCarlo in Sea Devils. Though the film is somewhat at sea there aren't any real devils in this picture.

It's a spy story set in the Napoleonic era with spymaster Denis O'Dea trying to implement a plan to send Yvonne DeCarlo over to hostile France from the Channel island of Guernsey. The guy who was going to take her over Maxwell Reid gets himself indisposed after a brawl with Rock Hudson in a tavern.

Reid and Hudson are rival smugglers who make a good living trading with the continent and breaching Napoleon's continental blockade on one side and avoiding the customs folks on the other. They also hate each other passionately and steal frequently from each other. But now Hudson has the only boat in town and DeCarlo has to use him.

As for the rest of the film, Hudson is not so much a romantic figure, but something of a lout who up to the end seems more of a hindrance all around than a help. As for DeCarlo although she's a spy she's no Mati Hari and it ain't clear just who she's a double or triple agent for until the end.

This is a minor league swashbuckler directed by the always good Raoul Walsh that didn't hurt Rock Hudson's career any, but I don't think it especially helped.

Swashbuckling movies in the best Douglas Fairbanks/Errol Flynn tradition enjoyed something of a revival in the fifties, probably because they provided the colour and spectacle which the cinema needed as a weapon in its battle with television, and Rock Hudson was one of several actors (others included Stewart Granger and Burt Lancaster) endeavouring to prove themselves the heir to Flynn.

In "Sea Devils" Hudson plays Gilliatt (we never learn his Christian name), a Guernsey fisherman-cum-smuggler during the Napoleonic wars. The plot is nothing particularly original; it is essentially a basic Cold War or World War II espionage story sent back in time to an earlier period of British history. Gilliatt agrees to transport a beautiful woman to France in return for payment. She tells him that she is a refugee from the Revolution and that she needs to return to rescue her brother, who is being held captive in a dungeon, but he later comes to suspect that she may in fact be a spy for the French. Gilliatt may cheerfully disregard British law, at least as regards the evasion of import duties, but remains a patriot at heart, so is horrified that he may have played a part in assisting the enemy. Or is the lady in fact a double agent who has been working for the British all along? A sub-plot involves Gilliatt's rivalry with another smuggler, the villainous Rantaine, who has no qualms about helping the French provided he is paid enough.

Hudson's leading lady here is Yvonne De Carlo who (like a number of his leading ladies from the fifties, Jennifer Jones in "A Farewell to Arms" being another example) was slightly older than him. Although the age difference in this case was not great (Rock was 28 in 1953, Yvonne 31), this perhaps made him unusual in a decade when Hollywood's leading male stars were often cast against much younger women. I certainly can't agree with the reviewer who found Yvonne too old for the part; in the early fifties she was one of Hollywood's loveliest female stars.

"Sea Devils" is reasonably entertaining, but it has no great action set- pieces and it cannot compare to the really great swashbucklers like the Errol Flynn "Adventures of Robin Hood" or "The Sea Hawk". It does, however, remain watchable today, if only for the charisma of its two leads. 6/10

Some goofs. Although the film is set in 1800, Napoleon is referred to as "Emperor" of France. He did not become Emperor until 1804; in 1800 his title would have been First Consul. The French name "Lethierry" is consistently mispronounced as "Letheery".

Gilliatt, a fisherman-turned-smuggler on the isle of Guernsey, agrees to transport a beautiful woman to the French coast in the year 1800. She tells him she hopes to rescue her brother from the guillotine. Gilliatt finds himself falling in love and so feels betrayed when he later learns this woman is a countess helping Napoleon plan an invasion of England. In reality, however, the "countess" is an English agent working to thwart this invasion. When Gilliatt finds this out, he returns to France to rescue the woman who's true purpose has been discovered by the French.

Sea Devils isn't a swashbuckler, but a spy adventure set in the Napoleon era with plenty of boats and the sea and coastal area and inns. It's quite entertaining with nice Technicolor, cinematography and a plot that swerves into each event seamlessly. It meanders just a tad, but not much, not with the inspired pairing of Rock Hudson and Yvonne DeCarlo. Maxwell Reed plays Rantaine, the oily villain of the piece. The last ten minutes are quite tense with our heroine being captured and then let go by the French in order to capture her rescuers. It's pleasant viewing all round.

This is a disappointing minor swashbuckler considering it was written by a fairly competent screenwriter (Borden Chase) and directed by the usually dependent Raoul Walsh. Rock Hudson plays a fisherman turned smuggler during the Napoleonic wars who becomes embroiled in some routine espionage shenanigans after falling for Yvonne De Carlo. Hudson has a sidekick in the bizarre diminutive form of Bryan Forbes, who looks faintly ridiculous in the role of a spirited, hard-drinking smuggler. Their relationship put me in mind of the great Errol Flynn and Alan Hale flicks of the 30s and 40s, which was a bad thing for this film because Hudson and Forbes are no Flynn and Hale.

Hudson's character is as dislikeable as it's possible for a movie hero to be. he has the moody, impetuous temperament of a lovesick schoolboy for much of the film, and it's no coincidence that the film livens up only when he is off-screen. He spends much of his time on-screen dramatically baring his nipples and striking manly poses which should, when you think about it, lend this effort a fairly high camp quotient, but strangely the film stubbornly refuses to develop any kind of character. The ending, when it finally, belatedly arrives, is as rushed and anti-climactic as you are likely to find...