Testing himself on WWII espionage far removed from his usual play or literary adaptations, director Anthony Asquith got lucky when savvy producer Anthony Havelock-Allan gave him Paul Dehn’s morally tricky/fact-suggested script.* Paul Massie uses his slight build & weak chin to good effect as a grounded flyer transferred to undercover spying thanks to his impeccable French. The job? Take out a low level, small-town Resistance liaison man whose British contacts are being discovered by the Gestapo at suspicious rates. (Five of the last nine dead.) Only problem: once landed, Massie starts to find reasons that make him believe this middle-aged family man is innocent of the charge. A classic spy yarn Asquith has trouble putting over at first. Training and mission detail coming across like canned theatre with flat interiors, bald exposition and the usual British idea of Ugly (wartime) Americans. But hold on; Act Two brings striking improvement as Massie, once in France, finds the reality of an ordered military assassination doesn’t match up to the larky adventure he imagined. In a way, Asquith goes thru a similar process, locating his proper place within noir stylistics (seconded by regular lenser Desmond Dickinson’s exterior work), pace, suspicion & suspense. And he's not hurt by the uptick in acting by all concerned when Irene Worth joins the story as Massie’s ambivalent local contact. The script even retains a modicum of moral complexity, softened rather than written out, right thru the ending. BTW: the high billing for Eddie Albert (Massie’s superior officer) and Lillian Gish (mom back home) is exaggerated, no doubt to help Stateside distribution, but they’re both fine. So’s the film.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Dehn misses a sure thing in a little coda by not having the film’s pet cat make a return appearance after finding her way home post-occupation. On the other hand, there’s a nifty meet-cute for assassin and target at the local bistro involving a rabbit stew that just might be kitty-cat fricassée.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Having the French speak accented English was standard practice at the time (still is to some extent), but not using it here could have considerably bumped up verisimilitude.
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