User reviews

I first saw Odette when I first arrived in the United States at age 12. I was captivated by television and watched old movies and old television reruns after school. I was just developing a love for history and world war 2 history at school when I saw Odette for the first time. The story, authentic scenery and realistic performances completely drew me in. This movie will keep you on the edge of your seat for it is extremely intense and Anne Neagle draws you completely into the dark world experienced by Odette Sampson. Trevor Howard is strong, convincing and underplays just enough to allow Miss Neagle to shine, while conveying the strength of his character. I highly recommend this film if and when it can be seen again. The historians in the world would love the chance to add this film to their collection. Waiting patiently for the video and DVD.

Being a connoisseur of 1940/early 50s films with an extensive collection, I was surprised that I had never seen "Odette" before but have now done so courtesy of Youtube.The plot is similar to "Carve her name with pride"(1956) starring Virginia McKenna), that is a French woman living in the UK who volunteers to help the allies and Resistance in France during WW11.Anna Neagle showed her lack of linguistic ability speaking French & lapsing into English several times even when speaking to French Resistance workers.On the other hand the German speaking actors were quite authentic in their roles with the producers NOT providing English sub-titles in certain German only sequences where the action was clear.

Still it did give Dame Anna a chance to do a spot of real acting and "suffer" for us on screen with Trevor Howard's nicely understated performance playing her husband, Peter Churchill.I do understand that film censorship in 1950 could not allow any special effects showing Anna Neagle's character having her toenails being pulled out by the Gestapo, even suggesting it was slightly shocking then.Marius Goring was often well cast in sinister yet intelligent roles as he plays here as an officer in the Deutsche Abwehr.Another role he played in the same year of 1950 was as a Balkan/Serbian police inspector with Margaret Lockwood in "Highly Dangerous".Good to see "M"(a youngish Bernard Lee) initially from "Dr.No (1962) learning his trade in military intelligence.I awarded this film 6/10.

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.

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.

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.

This movie is a tribute to all the women and men that risk their lives in resisting in France. It tells the story of Odette, a French-born woman that decided to enlist in a British section working under cover in France to help resistance and gather intelligence.

The movie is inspired by real events and tries to give a good overview on what was that kind of life. It can only be commended for that. However in itself, the movie is so so, not to say disappointing. It lacks a few film to grasp the audience and make us feel the bravery shown by all this women and men!

I also did not understand the language management in this movie: We switch from English to French in France only to distinguish the British spys from the rest - at first - and then every French in relation with them speak English as well. It should have be either all in English or in French: to speak English in France under cover would be really amateurish... (I'll not mention the bad French spoken with an evident English accent). On top of it, same happens with German (with the secretary being told bad with English to the next scene fluently talking in that language...).

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.

Anna Neagle was better known for this film than any of the others she has made.

A story of a French mother with three young children living in Britain, who is recruited by the spy service to return to Nazi occupied France as an undercover spy.

Neagle plays Odette. Her handler Peter Churchill in France is played by Trevor Howard and there is also a young Peter Ustinov as a message transmitter.

The initial part of the film is bland with Odette delivering and retrieving messages which has little or no tension.

However once Marius Goring enters as a German officer who seems to despise the Nazis, things take an interesting turn. Odette and Churchill are captured and Odette is tortured by the Nazis which is the most harrowing part of the film.

Neagle, Goring, Ustinov and Howard are all excellent but the film is let down with the less than rip roaring spy adventures at the beginning.

Good use of makeup is made on Neagle to reflect the months of abuse she suffered at the prison camp.

Only the team of Herbert Wilcox, (producer and director), and Anna Neagle, (his actress wife), could take a story like "Odette" and make something as dull as this. Odette Sansom was a British agent working in Nazi occupied France so the potential for excitement and drama was evident but everyone connected to the film pussyfoots around the issues it raises and treats Odette as if she was the Virgin Mary. Of course, Neagle was never a serious actress to start with and throughout behaves as if she had done nothing more than spill something on her dress at a Royal Garden Party, her stiff upper lip hardly quivering at all while actors as fine as Trevor Howard and Peter Ustinov can do nothing with the leaden material they have to work with, (only Marius Goring goes some way to lifting the film out of the doldrums), and the whole thing drags on for two hours. Odette's story should have been both moving and inspiring and with a better writer, a better director and a better actress it might have been but this half-hearted attempt by the British Establishment to honour a genuine heroine simply falls flat.

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'.

One always feels a sense of.duty while watching an Anna Neagle film. She tackles important subjects, as well as doing musicals with Errol Flynn, but she always plays the same role - la Neagle. Here she is a Resistance heroine based on a real figure, but one can't help feeling that Virginia McKenna did the role far better in 1957's CARVE HER NAME WITH PRIDE. Nonetheless this film has its moments, and passes away a wet afternoon agreeably enough.

Whilst not the paciest of WWII espionage stories, it is certainly one of the most considered - and by a clever use of subtle staging and lighting/sound manages to demonstrate the truly appalling nature of the Nazi treatment of the Allied intelligence gatherers/saboteurs and their brave French associates during the war. Based on a real person, a strong, determined, Anna Neagle - in the title role - is parachuted into occupied France where, with Trevor Howard and Peter Ustinov, she works to help the locals survive the tyranny of their new masters whilst passing back vital information to Britain. She is captured, tortured and it is all presented to us in such an evocative manner as to be really quite affecting. Ustinov is not his usual buffoon; and Howard, though still with his stiff upper lip - portrays "Capt. Churchill" (whom the Nazis think may be related to you know who) with delicacy and style. It lacks the visual violence and gore of many similar stories, but that just adds to the potency.

Based on a real story, this film takes us through the thrilling tale of Odette Sansom, a French citizen living in England who somehow manages to become a spy during WWII. She worked in the spy ring of Peter Churchill, eventually marrying him after the war.

Anna Neagle plays Odette adequately, though I couldn't help but get lost in the bizarre spectacle of her eyebrow situation in close-ups. They looked like they were drawn on with a marker, and it was impossible to take her seriously. As for Trevor Howard as Peter Churchill, he's suitably heroic, if by "heroic" you mean the textbook definition of a war hero with zero surprises. Unfortunately, the story of Arnaud (Lt. Alex Rabinovich) is spoiled for us within the first five minutes, because who doesn't love knowing exactly how things are going to end before they even start?

The constant shifting between bad French and English is a treat, too. Nothing says "historical drama" like linguistic confusion.

The torture scene is actually pretty effective, mainly because we get to imagine the horrors. But don't worry, we don't see anything too gruesome. Odette's face is appropriately disrupted (because what else could it be after years in a concentration camp?), and we can just assume that's the extent of the emotional depth here.

Not a masterpiece, but it's totally watchable if you're into watching historical fiction that plays it safe and delivers exactly what you expect.

"Odette" is the true story of Odette Sansom, an incredibly brave lady who risked her life as a spy during WWII. Much of the film is about her exploits in France during the Nazi occupation and the final portion is about her being caught, tortured and imprisoned.

While the film is a bit slow here and there, I appreciates so much about it. First, while it was sanitized and you didn't see the same degree of horrors Odette saw in Ravensbruck concentration camp, the film didn't succumb to 'Hollywoodizing'....fictionalizing her story in order to make a supposedly better film. You see her as she was...a brave but vulnerable woman. Second, the story was a bit underplayed...and seemed more real because of it. Overall, an exceptionally well made and true story of an incredible lady.

Trevor Howard and Anna Nagle give sterling performances in this WW2 Biopic of Odette Churchill, the wife of a relative of Winston Churchill. Every scene has the feeling of that authenticity that only films during or shortly after WW2 have. This film has understated British sensibilities, not overblown Hollywood production values. In many ways, it is similar to the one of best films of WW2, Brief Encounter. Howard was in that film as well. These were the best two films of his career; and this film is the best performance in Anna Neagle's career as well. Peter Ustinov gives a pleasing performance, and will become the owner of Spartacus in ten years or so. The only criticism of the film is the survival rate of leaders in the French Resistance. A documentary I have seen recently mentioned that the fatality rate of leaders in the French Resistance approached 75%. Hollywood (and Britain for that matter) likes to portray the Germans as stupid and incompetent when policing the French Resistance. Nothing could be further from the truth. The semi documentary I saw (Army of Shadows 1969) showed a highly efficient German surveillance of French Underground activity and the elimination of the vast majority of those brave participants. See these films for the best about the French Resistance.

Why is the Ravensbruck Commandant's Mercedes car right hand drive?