Decent and thrilling WWII espionage film with the great Cornel Wilde excellently accompanied by a known support cast . This is an espionage flic dealing with O. S. S. Operatives working behind enemy lines and based on fact , it concerns secret agents and a double-agent who encounter themselves working for both contenders in the 40s , as the Russian secret service and Allied Secret service , while being mercilessly pursued by Nazis . A few years after the end of WW2 a special French military commission is put to judge a past happening , that's why they summon witnesses who could shed light on an incident that took place during the war . It is followed by a long flashback in which one group of mostly French Foreign Legion soldiers , they are all French except one who is American (Cornel Wilde) , refused to surrender to the Germans and being holed-up in a farm house continued to offer hard resistance and defence to the Germans . Their officer, Capt. Armand Dupree (Paul Picerni) asks for the surrendering . While under attack by German forces, the French army unit discovers there is a traitor in their midst , feeding the Germans information. After the Armistice some of them, prisoners of war in German POW camps, go away and joined various resistance groups . The American , Peter Forrester , joins the US Army and is recruited by US Intelligence. O. S. S for his language skills and for the fact he had lived in Germany and France before the war . Then he accepts a dangerous mission behind enemy lines , in occupied France , Operation Secret starts and along the way Forrester meets a mysterious nun , Maria Corbet (Phyllis Thaxter) who helps him . Later on , things go wrong .
This agreeable film packs intrigue , noisy action , suspense , warlike feats, twists, turns and being quite entertaining, adding a first-rate main and support cast . However , there's a lot of WWII stock footage , including bombing , allied attacks and planes . The story was based on Peter Ortiz who was an OSS agent in World War II in France and was also originally based on the World War II director of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). In fact , this role was also essential on the film 13 Rue Madeleine (1946) by Henry Hathaway with James Cagney , Richard Conte , but due to military intelligence and secrecy reasons, Hollywood studios were prevented by the U. S. government from mentioning the OSS in movies during World War II, which is the case here . Cornel Wilde gives a good acting as a spy who finds out one of the agents-in-training is actually a double agent and takes the risk of going in after him. Ample and stunning supporting cast providing magnificent acting , such as : Steve Cochran , Karl Malden , Paul Picerni , Lester Matthews , Dan O'Herlihy , Harlan Warde , Jay Novello, among others.
This well-paced in cracking style flick was competently directed by Lewis Seiler, as he usually works very well , being capable handled in spectacular photography -though is really necessary a perfect remastering- , and adding enjoyable scenarios . Seiler was assistant director before directing a number of two-reel comedies . He was closely associated with Tom Mix Westerns during the 1920s. He spent much of the 1930s at Warner Brothers, resulting in some of that studio's "grittier gangster pictures" and "social drama" films as Crime School (1938), King of Underground (1939), Hell's Kitchen (1939), to name a few and making movies in all kind of genres , such as : Over-Exposed , Battle Stations , Women's Prison, The Bamboo Prison, The System , The Winning Team , The Tanks Are Coming, Day D, hora H , Whiplash , If I'm Lucky , Molly and Me , standing out in wartime genre, as he was responsible for what is generally deemed to be one of the finest war pictures to come out of Hollywood : Guadalcanal (1943). Retiring from motion pictures in 1958, he turned to television where he kept busy up to the time of his death. Rating : 6.5/10 . Well worth watching . Essential and indispensable watching for WWII buffs.
