13 Rue Madeleine

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the American government recruits several agents for the Secret Service, to be trained by the experienced veteran of World War I Robert Emmett Sharkey (James Cagney). However Bob is advised that among the men and women called O-77 there is a German double-agent, infiltrated to discover the date and location of the Allied Front in Europe. He discovers the identity of the spy, but he feeds him with false information to misguide the Germans. However, he suspects, escapes and kills one agent that was assigned to kidnap an important collaborationist in France in a dangerous mission. Without time to prepare another rookie, Bob decides to travel to Le Havre to accomplish the assignment and kill the German agent if possible.

Despite being dated, excessively patriotic and naive in 2009 and the narrative like a documentary in the beginning, "13 Rue Madeleine" is a great movie of espionage, war and action. James Cagney and Richard Conte have wonderful roles and performances. There are flaws, like for example the easy way that Jeff Lassiter and Bill O'Connell breach the security system of the shipyard and lure the agent, but in the end this feature is a great entertainment. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Rua 13 Madeleine" ("Madeleine 13 Street")

James Cagney stars as the crafty leader of American secret agents of the 077 during World War II. The invasion is not far off and the Nazis have implanted one of their top spies into Cagney's unit. Cagney has to figure out which one of his people is a Nazi and then double cross the double agent with misinformation. The film is fairly interesting, but the characters are not fleshed out well enough, which almost makes sense due to the semi-documentary nature of the film. Still, Cagney is great at being Cagney, which makes it worth watching all the way to the film's explosive ending.

I liked this movie. The plot concerns James Cagney as an OSS Type agent (I believed that for some reason the producers of this movie could not actually reference the term OSS). Cagney is one of the chief instructors in a US spy school (all the action happens in World War Two). Cagney finds out there is a top German agent going through this school. Cagney decides to let the German agent finished the training course and let him (German agent) parachute into occupied France (so the enemy agent will give the Germans false information). All this happens shortly before D-Day. However, the operation goes sour and Cagney has to parachute in to try to save the day.

I won't comment anymore on the plot as to not spoil the movie.

Probably the best World War Two spy/counterspy movies I have seen. I rate it high marks, very high marks indeed.

Although Jimmy Cagney is the star of this film, he really takes a back seat during most of the picture. Instead, the story focuses on a team of OSS operatives as they are trained and then deposited behind enemy lines (FYI--the OSS was the precursor for the CIA). I especially liked watching how they were trained to blend in--such as learning to eat European-style (with the fork ALWAYS in the left hand). Cagney is ever-present during this training process and only comes to the forefront again when the mission appears to start unraveling and he goes in to rescue the team members. In between, the film centers on the team members and their efforts to destroy the nazi menace in France.

Biggest pluses--excellent writing, pacing and acting (in that order).

13 Rue Madeleine (1947)

This movie starts slowly and gets gradually better as it goes, until a gripping final half hour and a shocking, dramatic ending. So it's worth the ride, and worth seeing James Cagney who is at the top of his game here (he is about to make his masterpiece, White Heat, after 15 years of gangster portrayals.) Of course here his tough guy persona is put to use for the good of us all, a patriot training a group of high level war time spies. The Nazis are brutal, and World War II is unrelenting, so even this highly skilled people die. It's a reminder how tragic the war was. It is made to be exciting and even fascinating, but most of all dangerous.

Though purely fiction, for legal reasons (the pre-CIA OSS spy organization didn't want too much revealed in the movie), the filming is meant to seem realistic in a documentary way, and it begins with an authoritative voice-over and what looks like some vintage footage. This "information" is given for too long a time, and if you are not a war expert, or even know what WWII was all about, this will be too gripping. But eventually the leads all start to take on real roles, and they move from their training in the U.S. (it was filmed in Quebec City, actually), to behind enemy lines. This is then really great stuff.

Director Henry Hathaway followed this same format (even with the title) in the 1945 The House on 92nd Street and it has some of the same flaws, and the same kind of superb second half. And a year later he did a third in the same mode, Call Northside 777. It was a successful formula for a public learning about its own federal level spy and police forces, Hathaway was a really good director, and we all wish he had taken these films in the direction of Kiss of Death, which is a gem, but he didn't, probably because of producers with ideas of their own, and so we have this trio of offbeat films with only parts that are amazing. Which isn't so bad.