Secret Mission

Apparently, as the film "Zero Hour" inspired "Airplane!", this routine propaganda film, "Secret Mission" from 1942 was the inspiration for a British comedy, "allo, allo." The film stars James Mason, Roland Culver, Michael Wilding, and Karel Stepanek.

Mason plays Raoul, a member of the Free French Army (and his accent is appalling) who returns to France to get German intelligence. He brings with him Captain Red Gowan and Major Peter Garrett (Roland Culver and Hugh Williams). Raoul brings him to his family's home, which his sister Michele (Carla Lehmann) is not happy about. The three also enlist the aid of a Cockney (Wilding) who is married to the owner of a café.

The story is pretty absurd, though done with a straight face. First of all, Red and Peter walk around this French village in trench coats like no one is after them, and they stick out like sore thumbs. They bluff their way into German headquarters as champagne salesmen and these dumb Germans give them a lot of info about troops, and leave them alone in the commandant's office so they can take a look at the map and write down targets.

The saving grace of the film is that it focuses on a family and the effect of war, and there, it does a decent job. These films were meant to keep people going during the war. I'm sure at the time no one noticed the more amusing parts. Evidently someone did later on, though.

I'd call this mildly entertaining, and if you know the show on which it's based, you'll love it. Kind of like seeing Zero Hour after you've seen Airplane!

Watching Secret Mission answered at least one question for me. The British no less than us were capable of putting out wartime propaganda flicks where the Nazis are shown to be complete imbeciles.

Secret Mission is the one that British soldiers Hugh Williams, Roland Culver and Michael Wilding were on. Williams and Culver are officers and gentlemen, but Wilding is a cheeky cockney private who happens to be married to a local from the area in France they're going. He's familiar with it himself.

Also along is James Mason who has an atrocious French accent who is a member of the Free French and he has family in the area as well.

Why they're in that particular area is unclear, but our guys get lucky in learning the Germans are building a huge underground bunker with all kinds of things stored there. Do you doubt that the guys on the mission foil the Nazi plans? They even rescued a downed Canadian flier to boot.

No one will ever confuse this film with some thing like In Which We Serve. If I didn't know any better I'd swear this one was put out by one of our poverty row studios. Look fast and don't blink and you'll catch Stewart Granger in a bit role.

Neither Granger or Mason ever bragged about being in this one.

They are all in it, James Mason, Michael Wilding, Hugh Williams, Stewart Granger and even Herbert Lom as the one German officer who is not a complete caricature, and the glorious ingenious music adds to the general flavour of good humour and fresh spirits, which was needed in the darkest year of the war, 1942. It's war propaganda, of course, but not as daft as it looks from the start. There are some excellent scenes, and you don't always hear James Mason with a French accent complaining about English food in preference of the French kitchen. There are a number of bottles in the film, and some are even opened, but the only wines served is the champagne for the Germans. James Mason is about to relish a well preserved bottle of Calvados hidden from the Germans when the party is interrupted by an unnecessary argument. It all ends up with some real banging and bombing in the end, when the Germans really are blowing it, providing a grand finale, raising the film from a trifle to some interesting entertainment. The best scene is the exciting moment when Michelle is listening to the British broadcast and the Germans barge in just in the right moment when Hitler is speaking - but only as an example of German propaganda shown by BBC, but the Germans leave Mademoiselle with respect and full of admiration for her German loyalty.

As an entertainment it's well worth seeing, and James Mason never fails to make any film he is in interesting enough to keep you awake all the way.

I'm sure that viewed during the war it was taken seriously but viewed today, with a critical eye, and I don't mean an aesthetic eye, its absurdity is what is called camp. It was only watching this film that I realized that the British TV series 'allo! 'allo! (1982-1992) was a broad parody. The central characters are two veddy veddy British chaps in trench coats wandering around in and out of the woods. Always in their trench coats. There's the cafe run by a Cockney in a beret always at odds with his wife. All we need is for the local flick to drop by and say "Good moaning". Even though people took this seriously at the time it boggles the mind to think people could really believe espionage

was actually conducted this way. For fans of the TV series this is a must not miss. I just wonder how stoned Croft and Lloyd were after seeing this film on TV 30+ years after having seen it in a West End cinema and realizing how absurd it all was and how they didn't notice 30 years before.

Hugh Williams (Peter Garnett), Carla Lehmann (Michele de Carnot), James Mason (Roul de Carnot), Roland Culver (Red Gowan), Michael Wilding (Nobby Clark), Nancy Price (Violette), Percy Walsh (Fayolle), Anita Gombault (Estelle), David Page (René), Betty Warren (Mrs Nobby Clark), Nicholas Stuart (Captain Mackenzie), Brefni O'Rorke (Father Jouvet), Karel Stepanek (Major Lang), F.R. Wendhausen (General von Reichmann), John Salew (Captain Grune), Herbert Lom (medical officer), Beatrice Varley (Mrs Donkin), Yvonne Andre (Martine), Stewart Granger (Sub-Lieutenant Jackson).

Director: HAROLD FRENCH. Screenplay: Anatole de Grunwald and Basil Bartlett — from an original story by Shaun Terence Young. Director of photography: Bernard Knowles. Special effects: Percy Day, Desmond Dickinson and John Mills. Music: Mischa Spoliansky. Art director: Carmen Dillon. Editor: E. B. Jarvis. Supervising art director: Paul Sheriff. Camera operator: Cyril Knowles. Still photographs: Jack Dooley. Production manager: Tom White. Assistant director: W.N. Boyle. Sound supervisor: A.W. Watkins. Sound recording: John Dennis. Western Electric Sound System. Made with the co-operation of the Ministry of Information, the War Office, and the Air Ministry. Producer: Marcel Hellman. A Marcel Hellman Production. An Excelsior Film.

Copyright 4 January 1945 by English Films, Inc. U.S. release through English Films: 26 September 1944. No recorded New York opening. U.K. release through General Film Distributors: 5 October 1942 (sic). Australian release through G-B-D/20th Century-Fox: 3 June 1943. 8,542 feet. 95 minutes.

SYNOPSIS: Three officers and a private from British Intelligence are landed in Occupied France.

COMMENT: A bizarre mixture of straight spy suspense and lowbrow comedy. Fortunately as the plot progresses, Michael Wilding's comic Cockney disappears for long stretches, allowing the more suspenseful elements to take hold in between the usual unlikely bouts of romance. On the whole, thrills win out.

Good production values help. The photography is especially attractive.

On the debit side, Mason's fans are not going to be happy either with their hero's tiny part or his ridiculous French accent. It's the far less personable Hugh Williams who steals most of the footage.