Bon Voyage (1944) User Reviews

"Off you go, bon voyage."

[classicsoncall · 7/10 · 23 March 2016]

Perhaps my two cents worth here might help concerning the history of this World War II propaganda film directed by Hitchcock, as I saw it on Turner Classic Movies with host Ben Mankiewicz providing background as the host. Unlike many British film makers of the era, when Hitchcock arrived in Hollywood in 1939, he did not return to England for a full five years as the war got under way. He took some heat from his countrymen for this while his own career in the States was taking off and accelerating.

When Hitchcock did return to England in 1944, he went to work on two propaganda films, basically without pay, and in the case of this film, as a tribute to the French Resistance effort. Made for the British Ministry of Information, the result was a disappointment to those in the government who were expecting a patriotic film showing the Resistance winning a great battle against huge odds with a grand, happy ending. Mankiewicz further offered that the film might possibly have never been shown in France or England at the time, shelved by the British government until the 1990's, at which time the print was restored.

Of the reviews on this board that I've read that disassociate the picture from Hitchcock's normal directing style, I would counter that it does contain elements found in many of his pictures, the most notable of which being that of an ordinary man who finds himself in an extraordinary situation. It also includes a twist in the story, in as much as the principal character Sergeant Dougall, upon reaching England via the French underground, learns that his associate Stefan who helped him escape, was actually a German agent, planted to ease his escape while acquiring vital information about French Resistance fighters and the methods they employed and the routes they used.

Granted that the exposition might have seemed slow and tedious, nevertheless I viewed this as an interesting and compelling war time drama. There's a moment when the viewer is thrown into doubt about what's going on when the French woman Jeanette visibly expresses confusion over the location where Dougall received his 'phony' message from Stefan. Staying attentive to the flashback scenes clears this up, and along with the French officer's explanation to Dougall concerning the identity of 'Stefan', makes this an effective espionage story.

A 25 minute Hitchcock wartime training film thriller?

[trimmerb1234 · 6/10 · 21 February 2008]

Shot in 1944 entirely in French (version seen has English subtitles), in style rather like a short section of a budget version of his "Lady Vanishes", it must have been intended for clandestine distribution in occupied and Vichy France. For this reason and the fact that it appears to have a clear practical purpose it presumably is a training film. It is thus not primarily a tribute to the French Resistance, its purpose seems instead to be to warn them of a dangerous new Gestapo method of infiltration. Hitchcock's contribution was to make the message clear and hold the attention.

It concerns the return to England of a British air-gunner (played by English actor John Blythe in French) recently escaped from a German prisoner of war camp. He has safely arrived back in London due to the help he received from the French Resistance and is being de-briefed by French exile officers. What should though have been a happy conclusion to a successful escape is soured when the true tragic facts are revealed to him that he has been an innocent pawn in a dastardly Gestapo design for the infiltration of the French resistance network. In this he was made a carrier of something deadly - not disease but something similarly poisonous - that he had been made to unwittingly expose members of the Resistance. One guesses that the main purpose of the film was to warn everyone of this.

Far superior to Aventure Malgache, if not classic Hitchcock

[TheLittleSongbird · 7/10 · 15 November 2013]

Coming from someone who considers Alfred Hitchcock her all-time favourite director, both Aventure Malgache and Bon Voyage are interesting curiosities but neither see Hitchcock at his best. While I didn't think much of Aventure Malgache, Bon Voyage was very well-done and you can see why Hitchcock himself was fond of it. The script is lacking in tautness and has a tendency to plod and a couple of the flashbacks flow a little too stiffly, even with those there is much to recommend. While Bon Voyage doesn't quite have Hitchcock all over it or see him show what he was most good at, there is more evidence of his directing style than in Aventure Malgache, the suspense levels are not exactly strong but Bon Voyage is not dull either and has some fun to it. The camera work is clever and meticulously composed and the crisp black and white also impresses. The score is a good mix of haunting and playful, while the story is simpler, much less confused and has some nice twists and turns. Unlike Aventure Malgache, Bon Voyage thankfully is not too dialogue heavy, the French are portrayed more sensitively and the propaganda elements, while also on the dated side, more subtly handled. John Blythe is decent in the lead role. To conclude, not a classic but it is not bad at all and of Hitchcock two French shorts he made in the 40s this is the far superior of the two. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Excellent Hitchcock Short Feature

[Snow Leopard · 22 May 2001]

"Bon Voyage" is a short, French-language film, one of two such features that Alfred Hitchcock made during World War II as a tribute to the French Resistance. It will be of special interest to fans of the great director, but it is also an interesting, exciting story that is worthwhile in its own right.

As the story opens, we meet a young Scottish pilot from the RAF who has successfully escaped German-occupied territory with help from the resistance. He is being de-briefed about his experiences by intelligence officials, and he goes back and relates for them (and for the audience) his exciting story. Then, in the second half, the officials take him back through the same events, to reveal some astounding surprises.

It is all nicely done in fine Hitchcock fashion. It is very much like a good episode from "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", and is about the same length.

Hitchcock fans should not miss "Bon Voyage", as there is nothing else quite like it in his movie credits. It is also a good story that should be of at least some interest to anyone interested in World War II films or spy dramas.

Delightful little propaganda film.

[A_Roode · 7/10 · 28 October 2006]

A delightful little propaganda film and more than just a curiosity for Hitchcock fans. The plot is about an RAF pilot who was shot down, escapes through France and is debriefed by French officials. He is helped along in his escape by courageous members of the French Underground and a co-escapist. His recounting of the events which allowed his return to England are given a very interesting spin by the French officials.

A companion with Hitchcock's other WWII French film 'Aventure Malagache,' 'Bon Voyage' was an attempt to buoy French spirits. I love the fact that the film is SUPPOSED to be a celebration of the daring and heroism of ordinary French civilians who've joined the Underground to fight the Nazis. Buried under the surface there are strong suggestions that being part of the underground will probably get you killed and that you should keep your mouth shut because German agents are everywhere. Heroism and sacrifice rule the day though and it is these two things which Hitchcock was attempting to realistically celebrate.

Given a limited showing throughout the Free French regions, 'Bon Voyage' remained a film that Hitchcock was fond of and was a film that Hitchcock considered expanding into a full feature after the war. Although lost in the shuffle and neglected by time, this isn't a bad film. It just remains under-exposed and under-appreciated.

Hitchcock propaganda film

[blanche-2 · 6/10 · 30 March 2016]

"Bon Voyage" is a very short propaganda film about the French resistance which Hitchcock did for the war effort in 1944. It was met with disappointment and later shelved.

The only person billed is John Blythe; the rest are called "The Moliere Players" to protect them from the Nazis.

Blythe plays a Scottish RAF Sgt. John Dougall. He is being debriefed about his escape from France by French intelligence officers in London.

Dougall has escaped from a prisoner of war camp along with Stefan Godowski, who actually put the plan together. The two stick together until there is a Resistance-aided pick-up in France by plane. But only one can go, so they shoot dice for it. Dougall is the one to leave.

Upon meeting with the Intelligence agents, Dougall says that he hopes Godowski made it and wants to know what happened. As it turns out, although the agents wanted Dougall's story about how he was helped along the way, they already knew it.

Good story, but it was too low-key for what the government wanted from Hitchcock - a real rah-rah story and big ending concerning the Resistance.Instead, it showed ordinary people taking risks, which I found moving and effective.

An old woman I knew was in Vienna studying just before the war broke out and, for academic reasons, went looking for Heinrich Mann, who was hiding out in France. (And I just saw a film about this very thing, Varian's War). On the beach, she saw a man and woman playing ball on the beach, and the ball kept landing near her. They turned out to be members of the Resistance.

I believe she did find Mann in a bar somewhere, but what impressed her (and me) is that this couple told her that they would never quit their work until Nazism was defeated.

In the end, I think Hitchcock told the right story. It's not the big triumph but the work that people do leading up to it, sometimes small things, that win a war.

"Slang makes your accent worse."

[jzappa · 7/10 · 2 August 2009]

This 26-minute Alfred Hitchcock entertainment is, of all things, a 1944 French-language propaganda short film made for the British Ministry of Information. Evidently, Bon Voyage was ultimately not shown because he made more of a crafty thriller, somewhat like a wartime propaganda version of Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Doulos, rather than a clearer, unequivocal exaltation of the Resistance. Out of this context, nevertheless, this does not deter the film. Indeed, ideological avenues discard the notion of the film text as singular in interpretation. That is, it doesn't necessarily make only one kind of sense, minus inconsistencies, omissions, or alternatives in the readings made by different members of the audience. Instead, the film is a kind of battleground for competing and generally adverse views. Naturally, this competition usually results in an upper hand for the culture's more prevalent view, but not without leaving cracks or divisions through which we can see the consensualizing work of systems and principles revealed.

Although the film is mostly just a concern to Hitchcock completists, philosophical speculation provides the point of entry to an understanding of the film's precise evolution of being made. These cracks, or disagreements, in the text are not merely the creations of critics. They are generally moments where the audience is conscious of a predilection in the narrative, where a uniting of lovers is figured in that is implausible or where the death of a character might feel causeless or capricious, or where one might have expected the ending to have another feeling of tone. Usually the customary issues of which we might catch sight within a film are determined by the inflexibility of the cultural contentions. An disappointing ending may come from failing to merge the idealized options completely. In this case, the ending feels clipped too soon for the hero, a downed RAF pilot, to have learned anything from his revelations, save the reiteration that Vichy spies are bad and the French Resistance is good but not invincible.

As I said, this political piece is not deterred by any unitary interpretation. In fact, despite its purposefully placid and unremarkable first half, it is surprisingly easy to see it as a very clever, if short, WWII caper about the escape of our hero through German-occupied territory. For better or worse, I admire it for its compact use of varying perspectives of the same events, a technique not unlike that used a few years later by Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, which, as we can see, is the one that had the lion's share of influence on cinema, storytelling, sociology and philosophy.

Viewer beware

[Rocket09 · 6/10 · 7 October 2005]

Disclaimer: This review is based on versions of Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache as seen on Turner Classic Movies. These versions were copyrighted 1993, and I'm assuming they are the same versions previously available on VHS and more recently on DVD. The following criticism is aimed at saving people much grief and money. If someone has seen the DVD and can disqualify any of my remarks, I welcome you to do so. There are so few accurate reviews of obscure DVDs.

Alfred Hitchcock made Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache (Madagascar Adventure) in 1944 to help the war effort by encouraging the French Resistance. The only people who have ever heard of these short films are Hitchcock fanatics, but even the most die-hard fans need not waste any time looking for these rarities. There is little in Bon Voyage and nothing in Aventure Malgache to indicate the hand of Hitchcock. Both films are in French and suffer from boring framing stories hung with flashbacks and constant voice-over narration. It is unlike Hitch to use so much dialog and the subtitles are difficult to read. The white lettering is hard to read against lighter parts of the background and at least half of the subtitles in Bon Voyage are cropped off the bottom of the screen.

Aventure Malgache tells of the French Resistance smuggling people out of Nazi-controlled Madagascar and is a completely forgettable film. Bon Voyage is more interesting. It tells of a British flier who has escaped from a POW camp. He is traveling with another escaped POW and helped by the Resistance, but there are double-crosses and murder in their path. However, only the murder scenes look like Hitchcock while the other scenes are very static. There is minimal camera movement and when the actors aren't sitting around talking they are shuffling around like zombies. The cropped subtitles leave viewers guessing at many of the finer details. Many references to passwords, place-names, and other important details (something about a cigarette used as a signal) are completely illegible. Bon Voyage does include the "old Gestapo trick" that Martin Landau mentions near the end of North By Northwest, but this is the only connection I could see to Hitch's other films.

If the DVD is significantly better than what I have described (new subtitles in yellow, for instance), please write a review saying so. It is very hard to find detailed reviews of obscure foreign films on DVD. Now I'm going to go critique the 1990 version of Cyrano.

Not bad, but don't expect any Hitchcock in this Hitchcock film...

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 20 October 2009]

During WWII, Alfred Hitchcock made two short films that starred French actors and were entirely in French. They were made as propaganda films aimed at Free French audiences. While interesting as curios, there isn't much about them that seems like they were made by the master film maker. In fact, overall they are both incredibly forgettable films.

This film is about two soldiers who escape from a Nazi prison camp. However, after one of them is able to make his way all the way back to Britain, he learns that the escape wasn't exactly what he thought it was...it was actually orchestrated by the Nazis! To explain all this, the film consists of several flashback scenes. Unfortunately, while mildly diverting, none of this is all that interesting.

By the way, another person indicated that the captions were often clipped off in the DVD release. This is very odd, as I downloaded a free copy (it is in the public domain) and the archive.org copy had captions that were easy to read and never were partially obscured. This is one case, I guess, where the free copy is better than the one you might pay for yourself!

Bland WW2 propaganda short

[grantss · 4/10 · 23 February 2024]

Sergeant John Dougall, an RAF air gunner, escapes from a German POW camp and manages to get back to England. There is interviewed by Free French officers. They are interested in Dougall's companion during his escape, believing him to be a German agent.

A French WW2 propaganda short film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Despite Hitchcock's presence the film is not that great. Plot is quite bland and a bit unfocussed. Some of the plot developments don't entirely make sense.

The version I watched had another major flaw: the English subtitles were very badly done, making the dialogue incomprehensible for much of the film.

Not worth watching, even though it is only 26 minutes long and is directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Bon Voyage

[jboothmillard · 4/10 · 27 July 2010]

I never knew that Sir Alfred Hitchcock directed a film all in a foreign language, admittedly it a short film, but I wasn't going to miss it for the sake of loving the director's past work. Basically young Scottish RAF gunner John Dougall (John Blythe) is debriefed by French officials about his escape from occupied territory. In particular one person he knows may or may not be a German agent, so it is his job to whittle out the spy. It should be said that this film was made for the British Ministry of Information to educate people about the things going on around the time of World War II. I hate to say it, but this isn't really one of the most exciting films in Hitchcock's list of thrillers, but there are some tiny moments to like. Okay!

Worthy for the message of support but dull and undistinguished otherwise

[bob the moo · 31 May 2008]

I have read a couple of message board comments on this film slating another reviewer (who didn't like it) for not understanding its "role" so for fear of upsetting those unable to cope with different opinions let me just say what I understand to be the case. Bon Voyage was one of two short films made by Hitchcock to encourage and bolster the French resistance by putting them at the core of the films and making them in French. It was an important gesture from the famous director and I'm sure was appreciated by those risking their lives in occupied France. However if all I am allow to comment on is its "role" then I should stop the review there.

Fortunately for me, the sight of a "0 of 10 users found this review useful" slogan doesn't bother me at all, so I will do what I normally do and just state my opinion and move on. Other than the war-effort significance, there is not much to this film to recommend it for now. The plot is set up in a terribly stiff device of flashbacks which puts a lot of pressure of the narration – another device that doesn't totally work. The story itself has a few twists but the delivery does suck the life out of them and, contrary to what others might say, there isn't much in the way of classic Hitchcock to be had here. The end result is a plodding and simplistic tale that is dull and straightforward.

So by all means, let's hold up Bon Voyage as a worthy effort on the part of Hitchcock and give it its dues in regards supporting the resistance but please let's not pretend that it is a good film worth seeking out because it most certainly is not.

Forgettable Hitchcock short film

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 16 July 2015]

This is an Alfred Hitchcock short film from over 70 years ago and it is actually not one of the director's early works, but he has already enjoyed a pretty prolific career at that point. Still, the films which were considered widely his finest efforts followed later, but "Rebecca" for example was already made back then. It's a black-and-white film that runs for 26 minutes and is mostly a little spy drama, maybe even thriller. There are (cold) war references and this fit in nicely there because obviously, back in 1944, World War II was still going on. However, in terms of the action I have to say I was not particularly well-entertained. And that is also why I cannot recommend it. One final note: The film is in French, so make sure you get subtitles if you want to watch it and don't speak the language.

Hitchcock en Francais

[JamesHitchcock · 26 October 2012]

"Bon Voyage" was one of two short French language propaganda films made by Alfred Hitchcock for the British Ministry of Information in 1944, the other being "Aventure Malgache". The film depicts the escape of a downed Royal Air Force air gunner through German-occupied France, with the assistance of Resistance fighters. The purpose was presumably to inform French exiles in Britain and America, and those living in territory controlled by the Free French Government, of the work being done, and the sacrifices being made, by their compatriots in the Resistance.

The film is very short, at only 26 minutes long, and today is likely to be principally of interest to Hitchcock completists. It does, however, have its points of interest, notably its use of multiple viewpoints of the same events, a technique that looks forward to later films such as Kurosawa's "Rashomon". We see the airman being debriefed by a Free French intelligence officer in London and quickly realise that the intelligence officer knows things about the escape that the young man himself is unaware of, especially that he has been an unwitting pawn in a German scheme for getting information to one of their agents in Britain. Another theme of the film is a warning to the French to be on their guard against the dirty tricks of the Germans and their Vichy French collaborators.

"Bon Voyage" was presumably intended principally as a propaganda film rather than as dramatic entertainment; had it been intended as the latter, it would have needed to have been at least three times as long. This is the reason why I have not awarded it a mark out of ten.

French Hitchcock

[ametaphysicalshark · 26 November 2008]

One of two French films Hitchcock made, both during WWII, both propaganda efforts (but not the nasty sort), "Bon Voyage" is a 26 minute long espionage thriller with a mostly uninspired script. It's not a lot of fun to sit through and only really worthwhile for Hitchcock fans or completists... His work here is solid but not remarkable in any way, and while the story is reasonably engaging and the acting good it's all a rather uninspiring and lacking affair. The script's probably to blame, as it's no fun at all when it really should be. A bit of a chore to sit through, to be completely honest.

5/10

Hitch's Two Shorts

[Michael_Elliott · 12 March 2008]

Bon Voyage (1944)

*** 1/2 out of 4)

One of two Alfred Hitchcock directed shorts this one dealing with an escaped POW (John Blythe) who tells his Captain how he escaped only to have his Captain drop a bombshell on him. This was a wonderful little film that was a lot better than I expected. As usual, Hitchcock manages to build up some wonderful atmosphere and the "twist" in the story is very nicely done and works without any hitches.

Adventure Malgache (1944)

** (out of 4)

The second of two propaganda films directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Three actors are getting ready for rehearsals when one of them says he doesn't know how to play the part. Another actor then tells him a story of a man he knew who was running a radio broadcast to beat the Nazis. This was a confusing mess of a film that isn't nearly as good as the previous film Bon Voyage. There's way too much dialogue and it's never clear what the director is trying to do with the material.