Secret Mission (1944)

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.

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.

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 espionagewas 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.

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.