Paris Underground ( 1945 )

During World War II, it was difficult enough trying to aid one British airman in escaping Germany under the watchful eyes of the Nazis, but one woman not only managed to sneak one airman out of the country but 150 soldiers! This woman was Etta Shiber, a Manhattan housewife who adopted Paris, France, as her new homeland. 

In the spring of 1940, she was fleeing from her apartment in Paris, along with her friend Kitty and her two French poodles, in order to escape the Nazi invasion. As they were traveling south, they stopped at an inn where the innkeeper informed them that he had rescued a British airman and was hiding him. Etta and her friend decided to smuggle him across the border to safety in the trunk of their car. And then they were brave enough to remain in France and contact the "Paris underground" to see if there were any other airmen needing passage back to Britain. 

Etta and Kitty were both captured by the Nazis in December 1940, just six months after she began this rescue operation. Etta was freed in the spring of 1942 when the United States did a prisoner swap and exchanged her for Johanna Hofmann, a German who was convicted of spying in the States. 

One year later she wrote a novel about her experiences smuggling soldiers and titled it "Paris Underground". This novel was turned into the film Paris Underground, released in Britain as Madame Pimpernel.

The film, produced by Constance Bennett, switches the main character to Kitty ( portrayed by Ms. Bennett ) and makes Etta, renamed Emmie, a secondary character. This part was given to Gracie Fields, the wonderful English actress/singer. Together, they make quite a good team. 

Paris Underground was tautly directed by Gregory Ratoff ( All About Eve ) and features all the elements one would want to see in a World War II espionage film: underground agents, quaint "Parisian" settings, secret passageways, diabolical Gestapo men, and plenty of action. The film focuses on two smuggling missions that the gals undertake and then hastily skims over several months until we find them captured and put into prison. They are supposedly released together and honored with medals for their heroism, but in reality, Etta did not know whether Kitty was alive, even at the time of writing her novel. 

Dame Gracie Fields, lovingly called "Our Gracie" by the Brits, had a long career in film, stage, radio, and television. Paris Underground was her last picture before she retired to the Isle of Capri where she operated a restaurant. The film does not showcase Gracie at her best ( comedy was her forte ) but she does a marvelous job with the role....as does Constance Bennett as Kitty. Also in the cast is George Rigaud as Kitty's husband, and Kurt Kreuger as the Nazi captain. Character parts were given to Eily Malyon, Vladimir Sokoloff, Andrew McLaglen, and Leslie Vincent ( who memorably played Dr. Watson's "nephew" Nicholas Watson in Pursuit to Algiers ). 

The Seventh Cross ( 1944 )

In Germany, in the year 1936, seven prisoners escape from a concentration camp. One by one they are caught and their bodies are placed on crucifixes at the camp as a warning to others who may attempt escape. Only one man from these seven, George Heisler ( Spencer Tracy ), remains uncaptured and it is his escape from the Nazi's Gestapo that becomes the dramatic premise of MGM's The Seventh Cross ( 1944 ). 

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios made a number of excellent espionage films right in the midst of the war. "The Seventh Cross" was a novel written by Anna Seghers that the studio had purchased to adapt as a film. The novel had all the makings of a blockbuster hit and indeed, the film itself raked in a tidy profit, but in comparison to other espionage pictures of the era, The Seventh Cross, lacks a few qualities that could have elevated the film to becoming a real classic. 

While Spencer Tracy gave a wonderful performance as our lead character George Heisler, Robert Taylor would have been more suited to the role. Tracy just wasn't convincing enough to be a bitter hard-hearted escapee from a concentration camp. His character has little dialogue throughout much of the film and Tracy's eyes were not expressive enough to convey what he was feeling in these scenes.....hence, the audience is given off-screen narration by Ray Collins to help us better understand his plight. 

At one point in the story, George hides at an inn where a pretty maid ( Signe Hasso ) aids him in hiding from the Gestapo. Within a few hours we are to believe that she falls in love with him, but this, too, would have seemed more plausible with Robert Taylor in the lead instead of Tracy. 

George Heisler's past could have been established better, too. Helen Deutsch's script smoothly avoided the topic of why George was put in a concentration camp in the first place ( the novel explained that he was a Communist ). For a brief moment, we are shown a flashback of George's sweetheart Leni ( Kaaren Verne ) vowing that she will love him always. He flees to Leni's apartment as soon as he escapes the camp only to discover that she refuses to aid him - and is now married to a German officer! This, of course, is a major shock to George but it fails to elicit much emotion from the viewer because Leni's character was given less than 3-minutes of screentime in the flashback scene, which is hardly enough time to flesh out a character. 

Nevertheless, The Seventh Cross has many redeeming highlights, most notably a fantastic performance from Hume Cronyn which earned him a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination. Hume portrays Paul, an old friend of George's who is willing to shelter him from the Nazi's and help him find underground connections who can arrange his escape out of Germany. Cronyn's wife Jessica Tandy is also given a wonderful part as his character's wife Liesel. It is worth watching the film for the performance this dynamic duo alone gives. 

Fred Zinnemann ( High Noon, From Here to Eternity, The Nun's Story ) helmed the production for the film and, even at this early stage in his career, it was evident what a skillful director he was. 

The Seventh Cross also boasts an amazing cast of supporting players including Herbert Rudley, Agnes Moorehead, dear Felix Bressart, Stephen Geray, George Macready, George Zucco and Eily Malyon.

Assignment in Brittany ( 1943 )

"Every second throbs with suspense and danger!" 

For once, those exclamatory theatrical heralds were right: Assignment in Brittany is packed to the brim with non-stop adventure. There is so much fast-paced excitement that if you do not have your ears pricked up and your eyes glued to the screen, you may lose some of the plot line. 

French heart-throb Jean-Pierre Aumont plays Pierre Matard, a captain in the Free French forces, who is sent to a small village in France disguised as Bertrand Corlay (also Aumont), a suspected Nazi collaborator. Since Pierre bears such a striking resemblance to this man, his task is to weasel out information about the location of a U-Boat base that the British believe is in the vicinity. For the audiences benefit, he accomplishes this mission in one and one-half hours filled with exciting moments of danger. 

Like many films that were made in the midst of the war, the brutality of war is not softened to appeal to audience tastes. In one scene, many of the friends that Aumont's character comes to know are executed in front of his eyes. The Nazis are portrayed as the fiendish brutes that they were. But there are tender moments as well. All good resistance fighters end up falling in love while on their missions and Captain Pierre has his moment of romance when his heart melts for the fiancee of his look-a-like Bertrand: Anne Pinot, portrayed by Susan Peters.

Assignment in Brittany (1943) marked the debut of Jean-Pierre Aumont, who had arrived in Hollywood just a year earlier and could barely speak English. It was stage actress Katharine Cornell who discovered the handsome Jean Gabin-esque actor and cast him in her play "Rose Burke". Shortly after he was signed to an MGM contract and made this film and another war drama, The Cross of Lorraine, that same year. Aumont himself had earned the Legion of Honor and Croix de Guerre medals for his service in North Africa with the Free French Forces from 1939-1940. While in Hollywood, he helped raise funds for the Resistance and returned to fight in 1944.  

Also making her American debut was Swedish actress Signe Hasso. She made a number of excellent war films, usually playing a heroine but, in this film, she is quite the vixen.

Like most MGM pictures, the production values on Assignment in Brittany are top-notch with great sets by Cedric Gibbons and Edwin Willis, costumes by Gile Steele, music by Lennie Hayton, and excellent cinematography by Charles Rosher (Annie Get Your Gun). The script to the film was based on a Helen MacInnes novel that was serialized in 1942 in "The Saturday Evening Post". MacInnes was a prolific author of espionage novels and, in 1943, MGM had turned another one of her books into a box-office hit - Above Suspicion. 

Assignment in Brittany has the usual elements that you would hope to find in an espionage film: suspicious double-face characters, secret codes, danger behind every corner, plenty of Gestapo agents, and the classic escape-in-disguise (this time taking place within a church in France).

The film's director, Jack Conway, was a veteran of silent films and numerous MGM "A" pictures (A Tale of Two Cities, Libeled Lady, Boom Town, The Hucksters). He was an excellent director and was capable of handling comedies, dramas, and action films with equal ease. The final scene of the destruction of the U-boat base is especially well-filmed and really caps off the picture with a bang. 

The movie also boasts a strong supporting cast of MGM stock actors such as Margaret Wycherly, Richard Whorf, Reginald Owen, Alan Napier, Miles Mander, and John Emery. A young Darryl Hickman is given a meaty role as a little French freedom fighter. 

The High Commissioner ( 1968 )

Espionage films were all the rage in the mid-1960s, a fever that had been ignited by Ian Fleming's James Bond spy series. George Segal investigated neo-Nazis in The Quiller Memorandum ( 1966 ), Michael Caine had starred in the Harry Carter films ( Funeral in Berlin, The Ipcress File ), Rock Hudson was caught up with terrorists in Blindfold ( 1965 ), Paul Newman had to unmask an imposter in The Prize ( 1963 ), Gregory Peck got mixed up in an assassination plot in Arabesque ( 1966 ), and Rod Taylor found himself caught in a web of international intrigue in The High Commissioner. 

This mildly entertaining 1968 thriller was also released as Nobody Runs Forever, a Bond-ish pastiche title. Taylor stars as Scobie Malone, an Australian police sergeant who is sent to London to arrest a wanted criminal who escaped years earlier and is now using an assumed name. With his new name, this murderer climbed the political ladder to become Sir James Quentin, high commissioner for peace for Australia. 

Scobie's simple task of fetching Quentin back for a trial gets complicated immediately upon his arrival in London. Sir Quentin happens to be in the middle of peace negotiations with several countries and requests a few days delay so he can attend the conferences. Sir James is a charismatic man whom many people speak highly of. Within one day Scobie begins to question whether he is even capable of murder. Scobie saves Sir James' life in an assassination attempt and Sir James, taking him into his confidence then, tells Scobie that someone close to him is leaking information to his enemies, and "would you be willing to look into the situation"? It's a request that Scobie cannot deny. 

The High Commissioner boasts a wonderful cast with Lilli Palmer as Sir James Quentin's wife; Camilla Sparv ( The Trouble with Angels ) as his private secretary; Franchot Tone ( in his last film role ) as an American ambassador; and Dalilah Lavi ( Ten Little Indians ), Calvin Lockhart, Clive Revill, and Derren Nesbitt as some of our suspects. 

Unfortunately, like many of the 1960s spy thrillers, the pacing of The High Commissioner is uneven. It begins quite brisk, screeches to a halt midway through, and then begins to climb in suspense once again near the finale. Ultimately, what redeems the film is Plummer's spot-on performance, its colorful cinematography, and Georges Delerue's fantastic opening theme.