In the late forties,fifiies and early sixties, French long movies were divided into two "époques" (times);that was the case of the masterpiece "les enfants du paradis"(1945).
With a running time of 205 min , "mission spéciale ", had thus the audience pay twice to see the whole .It was one of the first movie dealing with the French Resistance during WW2 ;it was intended magnum opus and still today makes the top 100 of the most successful movies of all time(n°90): it's hard to believe,for the film is today totally forgotten .
Maurice De Canonge was a so-so director , but some of his efforts are estimable : "grisou (about the miners) , "trois tambours" (about the time the French national anthem was written during the Revolution), and two good films noirs ("interdit de séjour" and mainly the intriguing "l'homme de la Jamaïque "). Before he was a character actor in Hollywood and in his native land.
First thing to bear in mind is that it is pure fiction ;by and large,your disbelief must be suspended if you are going to enjoy them ,particularly part 2 .
Part one is a spy thriller ,which takes place ,not in Belgium,like the precedent user wrote,but in France ,just before the debacle :if we are to believe the screenwriters, if France lost the drôle de guerre,it's because of those infamous spies : a spies ring , whose head is a mysterious "Marcus" and involves V. I. P . As well as obscure persons .
The screenplay is pretty disjointed ,mainly before nurse Emmy appears played by excellent actress Jany
Holt (whose filmography is impressive :les bas-fonds (Renoir) , les anges du péché (Bresson) , "non coupable "(Decoin) "le pays sans étoiles" (Lacombe )and more)who ,along Pierre Renoir as her spy -colleague,gives a comic-strip style movie some substance .
Today ,the plot is somewhat difficult to catch up with , but there are good nay offbeat scenes : the nurse,par excellence the noble female character of the war movie, who ,when she takes off her veil , gives information to the enemy ; but so as not to offend the audience 's suceptibilities ,there's also a good noble (in both senses of the term for good measure) nurse who begins to suspect her collegue.
The commissaire Chabrier (Jean Davy,who terribly lacks charisma and is outshone by the vilains )head of the counter- espionage ,fights against the ring which use carrier pigeons, coded messages ,invisible ink and the paraphernalia .In this laborious investigation ,two scenes stand out :the questioning of a lame Asiatic junkie who can't do without his opium pipe ,and that of a young man suffering from TB ,breaking down in the office :"what have I got to lose?"
The movie ends with the French debacle,and the flight of civilians from the north of France during the German invasion ;Undaunted , Commissaire Chabrier will continue the fight ; the audience is urged to fork out for part two.
