This otherwise routine propaganda piece, intended to lift spirits during the war, is redeemed by its focus on the personal effects of war. We can sympathize with the tough moral choices faced by the occupied French population, while we still have time for a laugh and a languid kiss before getting on with the serious business of outwitting the Nazis.
15 Reviews
British propaganda film
blanche-226 May 2012
Apparently, as the film "Zero Hour" inspired "Airplane!", this routine propaganda film, "Secret Mission" from 1942 was the inspiration for a British comedy, "allo, allo." The film stars James Mason, Roland Culver, Michael Wilding, and Karel Stepanek.
Mason plays Raoul, a member of the Free French Army (and his accent is appalling) who returns to France to get German intelligence. He brings with him Captain Red Gowan and Major Peter Garrett (Roland Culver and Hugh Williams). Raoul brings him to his family's home, which his sister Michele (Carla Lehmann) is not happy about. The three also enlist the aid of a Cockney (Wilding) who is married to the owner of a café.
The story is pretty absurd, though done with a straight face. First of all, Red and Peter walk around this French village in trench coats like no one is after them, and they stick out like sore thumbs. They bluff their way into German headquarters as champagne salesmen and these dumb Germans give them a lot of info about troops, and leave them alone in the commandant's office so they can take a look at the map and write down targets.
The saving grace of the film is that it focuses on a family and the effect of war, and there, it does a decent job. These films were meant to keep people going during the war. I'm sure at the time no one noticed the more amusing parts. Evidently someone did later on, though.
I'd call this mildly entertaining, and if you know the show on which it's based, you'll love it. Kind of like seeing Zero Hour after you've seen Airplane!
Mason plays Raoul, a member of the Free French Army (and his accent is appalling) who returns to France to get German intelligence. He brings with him Captain Red Gowan and Major Peter Garrett (Roland Culver and Hugh Williams). Raoul brings him to his family's home, which his sister Michele (Carla Lehmann) is not happy about. The three also enlist the aid of a Cockney (Wilding) who is married to the owner of a café.
The story is pretty absurd, though done with a straight face. First of all, Red and Peter walk around this French village in trench coats like no one is after them, and they stick out like sore thumbs. They bluff their way into German headquarters as champagne salesmen and these dumb Germans give them a lot of info about troops, and leave them alone in the commandant's office so they can take a look at the map and write down targets.
The saving grace of the film is that it focuses on a family and the effect of war, and there, it does a decent job. These films were meant to keep people going during the war. I'm sure at the time no one noticed the more amusing parts. Evidently someone did later on, though.
I'd call this mildly entertaining, and if you know the show on which it's based, you'll love it. Kind of like seeing Zero Hour after you've seen Airplane!
Routinely-plotted WW2 propaganda film delivers the goods
Leofwine_draca13 April 2017
Warning: Spoilers
SECRET MISSION is a routinely-plotted WW2 propaganda movie, made in Britain and set in occupied France. The plot is about a hodge podge of British spies and French resistance members who enter France in order to find out information about the enemy's local resources so that a secret invasion might take place.
This is one of those films which offers up a little bit of everything. There's romance here, some humour, suspense, and action too for the gung-ho crowd. What I liked most about it was the fact that the heroic characters have greater depth than normal by genre standards, so you end up caring about their plight. James Mason in particular stands out as a sympathetic fellow. The film starts off a bit slow but gets better and better as it goes on, building to a truly satisfying climax.
This is one of those films which offers up a little bit of everything. There's romance here, some humour, suspense, and action too for the gung-ho crowd. What I liked most about it was the fact that the heroic characters have greater depth than normal by genre standards, so you end up caring about their plight. James Mason in particular stands out as a sympathetic fellow. The film starts off a bit slow but gets better and better as it goes on, building to a truly satisfying climax.
Bottom Secret
writers_reign8 April 2017
Warning: Spoilers
For once I am in agreement with virtually everyone who has posted a comment here. It is, of course, impossible to view this film with the eyes and sensibilities of 1942, but against that we have all seen films made in and/or around this time which are NOT risible, In Which We Serve, The Way Ahead, spring to mind, so now we have to ask if the audiences who watched the two films cited also were able to watch Secret Mission with a straight face. In its favour it boasts a strong cast in the shape of James Mason, Hugh Williams, Michael Wilding, but then it negates that by making Mason and Wilding at least look totally inept and I can only suppose they were bound contractually to appear in it. It isn't even good social history as clearly no one behaved like this at any time or anywhere in history.
Always specify James Mason when you say, "Secret Mission".
JohnHowardReid11 December 2017
Hugh Williams (Peter Garnett), Carla Lehmann (Michele de Carnot), James Mason (Roul de Carnot), Roland Culver (Red Gowan), Michael Wilding (Nobby Clark), Nancy Price (Violette), Percy Walsh (Fayolle), Anita Gombault (Estelle), David Page (René), Betty Warren (Mrs Nobby Clark), Nicholas Stuart (Captain Mackenzie), Brefni O'Rorke (Father Jouvet), Karel Stepanek (Major Lang), F.R. Wendhausen (General von Reichmann), John Salew (Captain Grune), Herbert Lom (medical officer), Beatrice Varley (Mrs Donkin), Yvonne Andre (Martine), Stewart Granger (Sub-Lieutenant Jackson).
Director: HAROLD FRENCH. Screenplay: Anatole de Grunwald and Basil Bartlett — from an original story by Shaun Terence Young. Director of photography: Bernard Knowles. Special effects: Percy Day, Desmond Dickinson and John Mills. Music: Mischa Spoliansky. Art director: Carmen Dillon. Editor: E. B. Jarvis. Supervising art director: Paul Sheriff. Camera operator: Cyril Knowles. Still photographs: Jack Dooley. Production manager: Tom White. Assistant director: W.N. Boyle. Sound supervisor: A.W. Watkins. Sound recording: John Dennis. Western Electric Sound System. Made with the co-operation of the Ministry of Information, the War Office, and the Air Ministry. Producer: Marcel Hellman. A Marcel Hellman Production. An Excelsior Film.
Copyright 4 January 1945 by English Films, Inc. U.S. release through English Films: 26 September 1944. No recorded New York opening. U.K. release through General Film Distributors: 5 October 1942 (sic). Australian release through G-B-D/20th Century-Fox: 3 June 1943. 8,542 feet. 95 minutes.
SYNOPSIS: Three officers and a private from British Intelligence are landed in Occupied France.
COMMENT: A bizarre mixture of straight spy suspense and lowbrow comedy. Fortunately as the plot progresses, Michael Wilding's comic Cockney disappears for long stretches, allowing the more suspenseful elements to take hold in between the usual unlikely bouts of romance. On the whole, thrills win out.
Good production values help. The photography is especially attractive.
On the debit side, Mason's fans are not going to be happy either with their hero's tiny part or his ridiculous French accent. It's the far less personable Hugh Williams who steals most of the footage.
Director: HAROLD FRENCH. Screenplay: Anatole de Grunwald and Basil Bartlett — from an original story by Shaun Terence Young. Director of photography: Bernard Knowles. Special effects: Percy Day, Desmond Dickinson and John Mills. Music: Mischa Spoliansky. Art director: Carmen Dillon. Editor: E. B. Jarvis. Supervising art director: Paul Sheriff. Camera operator: Cyril Knowles. Still photographs: Jack Dooley. Production manager: Tom White. Assistant director: W.N. Boyle. Sound supervisor: A.W. Watkins. Sound recording: John Dennis. Western Electric Sound System. Made with the co-operation of the Ministry of Information, the War Office, and the Air Ministry. Producer: Marcel Hellman. A Marcel Hellman Production. An Excelsior Film.
Copyright 4 January 1945 by English Films, Inc. U.S. release through English Films: 26 September 1944. No recorded New York opening. U.K. release through General Film Distributors: 5 October 1942 (sic). Australian release through G-B-D/20th Century-Fox: 3 June 1943. 8,542 feet. 95 minutes.
SYNOPSIS: Three officers and a private from British Intelligence are landed in Occupied France.
COMMENT: A bizarre mixture of straight spy suspense and lowbrow comedy. Fortunately as the plot progresses, Michael Wilding's comic Cockney disappears for long stretches, allowing the more suspenseful elements to take hold in between the usual unlikely bouts of romance. On the whole, thrills win out.
Good production values help. The photography is especially attractive.
On the debit side, Mason's fans are not going to be happy either with their hero's tiny part or his ridiculous French accent. It's the far less personable Hugh Williams who steals most of the footage.
A bit less than routine.
rmax3048233 August 2009
Warning: Spoilers
An impressive cast: James Mason, Michael Wilding, Stewart Granger, Karel Stepanek, inter alia. And that's about it for the good parts.
Even the cast can't lift this wartime espionage thriller above the routine. James Mason is a splendid actor but should have stayed away from any role calling for a foreign accent. In "The Desert Rats" he mangled German. Here he does to a French accent what the Luftwaffe did to Stalingrad.
Michael Wilding sounds positively uncomfortable with his working-class London locutions. Karel Stepanek, who made virtually a career out of playing Nazis, at least SOUNDS right but the role seems to have come by way of a cookie cutter. What a stereotype. I can't blame the writers too much, though -- this being written in 1942, a bad year for the Allies.
Let's say this is an historical curiosity. The future held better things for most of the people involved in this low-budget thriller.
Even the cast can't lift this wartime espionage thriller above the routine. James Mason is a splendid actor but should have stayed away from any role calling for a foreign accent. In "The Desert Rats" he mangled German. Here he does to a French accent what the Luftwaffe did to Stalingrad.
Michael Wilding sounds positively uncomfortable with his working-class London locutions. Karel Stepanek, who made virtually a career out of playing Nazis, at least SOUNDS right but the role seems to have come by way of a cookie cutter. What a stereotype. I can't blame the writers too much, though -- this being written in 1942, a bad year for the Allies.
Let's say this is an historical curiosity. The future held better things for most of the people involved in this low-budget thriller.
You stewpid woman....
max von meyerling3 August 2009
I'm sure that viewed during the war it was taken seriously but viewed today, with a critical eye, and I don't mean an aesthetic eye, its absurdity is what is called camp. It was only watching this film that I realized that the British TV series 'allo! 'allo! (1982-1992) was a broad parody. The central characters are two veddy veddy British chaps in trench coats wandering around in and out of the woods. Always in their trench coats. There's the cafe run by a Cockney in a beret always at odds with his wife. All we need is for the local flick to drop by and say "Good moaning". Even though people took this seriously at the time it boggles the mind to think people could really believe espionage
was actually conducted this way. For fans of the TV series this is a must not miss. I just wonder how stoned Croft and Lloyd were after seeing this film on TV 30+ years after having seen it in a West End cinema and realizing how absurd it all was and how they didn't notice 30 years before.
was actually conducted this way. For fans of the TV series this is a must not miss. I just wonder how stoned Croft and Lloyd were after seeing this film on TV 30+ years after having seen it in a West End cinema and realizing how absurd it all was and how they didn't notice 30 years before.
Zoot alors!
JohnSeal9 September 2009
Warning: Spoilers
James Mason delivers perhaps the worst performance of his career in this incredibly mediocre intriguer directed by Harold French. Mason plays Raoul de Carnot, a Free French soldier who returns to his native land to plot against the Nazi occupiers with the help of his family and three British agents. Mason, who herein resembles a rictus grinning caricature of Frank Sinatra, emotes with one of the worst French accents ever captured on celluloid. Don't get me wrong: this is not a broad, Inspector Clouseau-ish accent, it's just a dreadful, unconvincing stab at Franglais. Mason seems to know it, to: he barely acts in the film and sheepishly mumbles his way from scene to scene. Secret Mission is also cheaply made (watch for the model boat chugging across a miniature set in an early scene) and badly written by future Bond-helmer Terence Young, but it's Mason who is the cerise sur le gateau. The whole thing would be a lot more fun if he'd been costumed in a stripy shirt and told to periodically nibble on a baguette.
Nazis don't keep secrets
bkoganbing9 February 2015
Watching Secret Mission answered at least one question for me. The British no less than us were capable of putting out wartime propaganda flicks where the Nazis are shown to be complete imbeciles.
Secret Mission is the one that British soldiers Hugh Williams, Roland Culver and Michael Wilding were on. Williams and Culver are officers and gentlemen, but Wilding is a cheeky cockney private who happens to be married to a local from the area in France they're going. He's familiar with it himself.
Also along is James Mason who has an atrocious French accent who is a member of the Free French and he has family in the area as well.
Why they're in that particular area is unclear, but our guys get lucky in learning the Germans are building a huge underground bunker with all kinds of things stored there. Do you doubt that the guys on the mission foil the Nazi plans? They even rescued a downed Canadian flier to boot.
No one will ever confuse this film with some thing like In Which We Serve. If I didn't know any better I'd swear this one was put out by one of our poverty row studios. Look fast and don't blink and you'll catch Stewart Granger in a bit role.
Neither Granger or Mason ever bragged about being in this one.
Secret Mission is the one that British soldiers Hugh Williams, Roland Culver and Michael Wilding were on. Williams and Culver are officers and gentlemen, but Wilding is a cheeky cockney private who happens to be married to a local from the area in France they're going. He's familiar with it himself.
Also along is James Mason who has an atrocious French accent who is a member of the Free French and he has family in the area as well.
Why they're in that particular area is unclear, but our guys get lucky in learning the Germans are building a huge underground bunker with all kinds of things stored there. Do you doubt that the guys on the mission foil the Nazi plans? They even rescued a downed Canadian flier to boot.
No one will ever confuse this film with some thing like In Which We Serve. If I didn't know any better I'd swear this one was put out by one of our poverty row studios. Look fast and don't blink and you'll catch Stewart Granger in a bit role.
Neither Granger or Mason ever bragged about being in this one.
British spies, one with a French accent, on a mission to liberate France with their French ladies.
clanciai9 May 2017
They are all in it, James Mason, Michael Wilding, Hugh Williams, Stewart Granger and even Herbert Lom as the one German officer who is not a complete caricature, and the glorious ingenious music adds to the general flavour of good humour and fresh spirits, which was needed in the darkest year of the war, 1942. It's war propaganda, of course, but not as daft as it looks from the start. There are some excellent scenes, and you don't always hear James Mason with a French accent complaining about English food in preference of the French kitchen. There are a number of bottles in the film, and some are even opened, but the only wines served is the champagne for the Germans. James Mason is about to relish a well preserved bottle of Calvados hidden from the Germans when the party is interrupted by an unnecessary argument. It all ends up with some real banging and bombing in the end, when the Germans really are blowing it, providing a grand finale, raising the film from a trifle to some interesting entertainment. The best scene is the exciting moment when Michelle is listening to the British broadcast and the Germans barge in just in the right moment when Hitler is speaking - but only as an example of German propaganda shown by BBC, but the Germans leave Mademoiselle with respect and full of admiration for her German loyalty.
As an entertainment it's well worth seeing, and James Mason never fails to make any film he is in interesting enough to keep you awake all the way.
As an entertainment it's well worth seeing, and James Mason never fails to make any film he is in interesting enough to keep you awake all the way.
Secret Mission
henry8-310 September 2018
4 intelligence agents - Williams, Mason (with French accent!), Culver and Wilding (just plain silly), go to France to see what the Germans are up to.
Very basic propaganda nonsense - all stiff upper lips and nazis all stupid and fresh out of pantomime with only Lehman and Culver retaining some little dignity. Like 'Allo, Allo' without the laughs - really not worth catching unless it's raining (heavily) and you've nothing better to do.
Very basic propaganda nonsense - all stiff upper lips and nazis all stupid and fresh out of pantomime with only Lehman and Culver retaining some little dignity. Like 'Allo, Allo' without the laughs - really not worth catching unless it's raining (heavily) and you've nothing better to do.
Just another standard resistance melodrama, nothing special.
mark.waltz2 February 2013
Warning: Spoilers
As if the writers took a "paint by number" book to create the screenplay, all the clichés of World War II "why we fight" stories are present in this tale of the French resistance. What makes it a bit more interesting is the presence of James Mason and Michael Wilding before them became Hollywood film stars. Mason gets a French accent (which sometimes sounds German) but Wilding gets to be totally British. Most of the French characters speak with a British dialect which makes Mason's accent more obvious. The only real interesting plot development concerns secret resistance members who obviously had slowly won the confidence of the Germans but were secretly working against them, making them enemies of their own people until that is exposed. Of course, you can't help but root for the resistance and cheer every time the Nazis are foiled and land back on their axis. It is obvious that this type of film cheered up the Allies enormously during the war and left them satisfied and motivated when they left the theater.
Proof that the British could also make mediocre or even sub-par propaganda films.
planktonrules24 June 2018
During WWII, Hollywood made hundreds of films aimed at solidifying the public's support for the war. Some of these were extremely well made while others often made the Japanese or Germans seem semi-human and rather stupid. These less well made and less realistic films often were, in spire of themselves, quite entertaining...but also very obvious in their aims. When I saw "Secret Mission" I realized that the British, too, could make ridiculously unrealistic propaganda films....and while the Nazis aren't quite as cartoonish as some of Hollywood's Nazis, they were incredibly stupid...so stupid you wonder how they ever took over most of Europe!!
The story involves some British spies as well as one French one (James Mason of all people) who sneak into France in order to survey the area before an upcoming invasion. The Nazis are uniformly dim...having very lax security and falling for pretty much every lame attempt at subterfuge! The Germans are SO dumb that it really takes away from the movie...and doesn't show how efficiently evil they really were!
So is it any good? Well, it's not terrible...not that this is a glowing endorsement! Overall, despite some very fine actors (such as MIchael Redgrave, Herbert Lom and Roland Carver), a relatively dull offering...one that is watchable but not much more.
The story involves some British spies as well as one French one (James Mason of all people) who sneak into France in order to survey the area before an upcoming invasion. The Nazis are uniformly dim...having very lax security and falling for pretty much every lame attempt at subterfuge! The Germans are SO dumb that it really takes away from the movie...and doesn't show how efficiently evil they really were!
So is it any good? Well, it's not terrible...not that this is a glowing endorsement! Overall, despite some very fine actors (such as MIchael Redgrave, Herbert Lom and Roland Carver), a relatively dull offering...one that is watchable but not much more.
Boring and complete twaddle
robert-temple-13 December 2007
Warning: Spoilers
What a low level things sometimes fell to during the War! To think that such a worthless exercise as this could even be contemplated, much less filmed! James Mason is supposed to be a Frenchman named Raoul, but his French accent is something a ten year-old in a school play would find embarrassing. Thank goodness he dies before the end, none too soon! Michael Wilding is even more ridiculous. He plays someone who owns a cafe in Normandy, but he speaks with a Cockney accent and acts like a clown. As for Roland Culver, he ambles through this film as if he were on a golfing holiday, occasionally wrinkling his brow in order to suggest he may have thought of something, and once in a while uttering a platitude to remind us that this is a talkie (or perhaps to wake the audience up). What passes for a plot is about some jolly chaps going off to Normandy from Britain, to be beastly to the Germans and find out how to win the war by discovering where some things are which might be blown up, dontcha know. Their idea of hiding from the Germans is to leap behind a false bush and leave their legs showing. The dunderheads in helmets who rush by with fixed bayonets are unable to see legs showing behind false bushes, so that's all right, then. This film would disgrace the word 'travesty', if I were to attempt to use it, so I will use the word 'rubbish' instead.
Mission implausible.
brogmiller25 December 2020
Films generally speaking fall into one of two categories: grevious disappointments and jubilant surprises. This lamentable effort falls squarely into category 1.
It has to be one of the most inept, ludicrous and unintentionally comic films across which this viewer has had the misfortune to stumble.
Harold French would not be on anyone's list of top rank directors but this is the bottom of the barrel.
It is probably best to draw a discreet veil over Michael Wilding's 'Mockney' and the 'Frenchie' of James Mason. Hugh Williams and Roland Culver are both immaculate but totally miscast and saunter through proceedings like guests at a garden party. Mr. Culver's cravat is singularly incongruous in occupied France. The 'romantic' interest is supplied by Carla Lehmann who is about as appealing as a plate of cold chips. All of the Germans, with the exception of Herbert Lom's medical officer, are complete and utter buffoons.
One can only assume that the devilishly subtle propogandist message here is that if the Huns are this stupid, how can we possibly lose?!
Harold French would not be on anyone's list of top rank directors but this is the bottom of the barrel.
It is probably best to draw a discreet veil over Michael Wilding's 'Mockney' and the 'Frenchie' of James Mason. Hugh Williams and Roland Culver are both immaculate but totally miscast and saunter through proceedings like guests at a garden party. Mr. Culver's cravat is singularly incongruous in occupied France. The 'romantic' interest is supplied by Carla Lehmann who is about as appealing as a plate of cold chips. All of the Germans, with the exception of Herbert Lom's medical officer, are complete and utter buffoons.
One can only assume that the devilishly subtle propogandist message here is that if the Huns are this stupid, how can we possibly lose?!
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