With WWII over, Hollywood went on a now-it-can-be-told story spree. Anything atomic held obvious fascination, no matter how much info was still limited, rivaled by foreign intrigue out of the O.S.S., that daring forerunner of the C.I.A. Ergo, for God, Country & Paramount, Alan Ladd went undercover in France for O.S.S.; Warners sent Gary Cooper to Italy for Fritz Lang’s CLOAK AND DAGGER; and over at 20th/FOX, James Cagney ran an ‘op’ in the Netherlands, before being tortured at Nazi headquarters at 13 Rue Madeleine, Le Havre.* All three are mediocre suspensers (Lang particularly off-form), but advantage Cagney since 20th/FOX had a perfect template ready to fit all the moving parts in their on-going series of docu-dramas produced by ‘March of Time’ vet Louis De Rochemont. Shooting largely on location (‘In the very place it happened!’), director Henry Hathaway had recently made one of the most effective at THE HOUSE ON 92ND STREET/’45. Here, with O.S.S. renamed ‘077,’ opening reels stick to standard selection & training exercises, while Cagney scopes out his 70 recruits to find the Nazi plant. Only later, after one of his three-member crew dies, does he personally join the mission. Annabella is touching & effective in her last Hollywood role (40 and out back then) while Richard Conte must have been happy away from default Italian-American roles; he's Irish-American . . . a phony one at that. No classic, but solid moviemaking under Hathaway’s clean, clear, fast-paced megging, with plenty of pulsating Warners moxie for and from Cagney.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Check out the trailer for some explicit torture of Cagney not in the final cut.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, more tales from the still abornin’ O.S.S. in CLOAK AND DAGGER/’46 and O.S.S./’46. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/03/cloak-and-dagger-1946.html https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/09/oss-1946.html
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