First Comes Courage (1943)

I was able to watch for only an hour before I gave up and walked away. It's really quite awful. Other commentators here are impressed by Merle Oberon's acting. Maybe it gets better in the last half hour, because in what I saw she wasn't called upon to do much. She was, however, stunning to look at, a real beauty, about the only thing that kept me watching for an hour.The rest of the film was worse than mediocre. Some of the sets looked like they belonged in a Little Theatre production. The music kept intruding with exaggerated emotion. The fight scene in the barn had that odd, speeded-up, Saturday morning serial look to it, with two guys tossing each other around in the most unconvincing way. But mostly the storyline could not be believed at all sorts of crucial moments. For example, the moment Oberon falls under suspicion. Why would she put herself under the spotlight? And why didn't he suspect her long before that moment? There was nothing special about that moment that he should suddenly suspect her for the first time. Her plan to get into the restricted area of the hospital is ridiculously complex, relying on so many things going precisely the way she hoped they would. The method the optometrist uses to convey secret information back to Britain is depicted at some length, unfortunately not in a way that is very clear--something about glasses, but how it all works was a mystery to me.It just wasn't worth watching. But Merle Oberon is an actress I will watch out for in the future. Maybe she can act, maybe she can't, but she can sure light up the screen.

Merle Oberon plays Nicole Larsen, a Norwegian who is playing a VERY high stakes spy game. She is working for the Resistance AND at the same time dating* the local Nazi commander. However, the plan has always been that the commander gets too close to discovering her true identity that the British would send in commandos to kill him. They don't want to use local talent because the murder would lead to serious retribution towards the local populace. So, the plan is to have an agent specifically target this Nazi during a raid to hide the true purpose of the attack. Now this is a pretty simple plan...perhaps too simple. So the writer throws in a monkey wrench. The commando who is sent in to kill the man is also Nicole's former lover, Captain Lowell (Brian Aherne). And then, to further muddle things, the Nazi wants to marry Nicole and Nicole wants to go through with it and NOT have the man killed. Why? Well, see the film.This is a very nice espionage film that strongly emphasizes self- sacrifice and patriotism. I am sure the message was being pounded hard in order to bolster the war effort at home, but it was done deftly enough that it did not come off as preachy of obvious like many propaganda films. Overall, well acted and worth seeing...so good I almost gave this one an 8.

Merle Oberon and Brian Aherne star in First Comes Courage," a 1943 film directed by Dorothy Arzner. Oberon plays Nicole Larsen, a Norwegian who is seen by the other townspeople as a traitor because she's dating a Nazi (Carl Esmond). In truth, she's using him to get information to the underground. When a British beau is smuggled into the country, he is later captured, and she has to get him away from the Nazis.Merle Oberon was underrated as an actress. She does a terrific job here (as she often did elsewhere), especially in a big, dramatic scene toward the end."First Comes Courage" is one of many propaganda films released during the war, and one of several that dealt with the presence of the Nazis in Norway, where politician Quisling helped the Nazis conquer his own country.Not great, but okay.

Dorothy Arzner's last directorial effort is replete with her usual feminist slant on things as Merle Oberon -- playing a Norwegian -- is caught between romantic Nazi officer Carl Esmond, who wants to marry her and British spy Brian Aherne who loves her, which is all a great inconvenience to her winning the war for Norway. The men are busy playing with their big tanks and their large meetings -- the state marriage of Esmond and Oberon with its TRIUMPH OF THE WILL sized set decorations is very funny. The occasional battlefield shots looks to me like they are modeled on those sets of plastic soldiers that used to be advertised on the back of comic books.Oberon, appropriately enough, seems to spend much of her time trying to keep a straight face as Esmond tries to romance her into marriage. It fits neatly into the sort of movie that Arzner used to direct Ruth Chatterton in in the early 1930s, but here, deprived of her favorite screenwriter, Zoe Akins, and forced into the confines of wartime propaganda, she still manages to get in the occasional sly dig.