13 Rue Madeleine

Rating:
Summary: It's all about Cagney
Review: 13 Rue Madeleine gets off to a horrible start with a painfully dated newsreel-style introduction replete with corny voiceover. If you can bear with that for five or ten minutes, the movie mercifully starts to grow more interesting as you watch would-be spies go through a secret training program that tests them physically and--even more so--mentally. From there, it's off to France for some well-paced, yet underdeveloped, cloak-and-dagger action centering on a German double agent, the opening of the Allied second front in western Europe, and the V-2 rockets.

Mercifully, the film mostly avoids cheap or unrealistic sentimentality (outside the opening narration), gratuitous love interests, and the like, and the Germans are shown to be quite competent at their jobs, instead of faceless buffoons. For a 40's war film, 13 Rue Madeleine is actually on the gritty and dark side, and the violence is a bit more fierce and graphic than you might expect. (The broken necks and knifings, not the implausibly bloodless shootings.) The actors generally acquit themselves decently, though they would have been far more engaging if more of them at least attempted the appropriate accents or--better still--spoke German or French where appropriate.

Ultimately, how much you enjoy this film will probably depend on how much you enjoy Cagney. He gives a fine performance here, not particularly nuanced, but full of vigor and seriousness. You can really feel the confidence and daring spirit of his character. Check out the scene where he signs into the hotel room to see how ably he conveys an air of authority. As enjoyable as Cagney can be here, he can't make 13 Rue Madeleine rise above being a merely decent, second-rank war film.

Rating:
Summary: It's all about Cagney
Review: 13 RUE MADELEINE is one of Hollywood's last stand against the Axis--a post WWII film that explains our cloak and dagger OSS effort which helped whip those sneaky Nazis. The Cloak and Cagney go well together in this film. Cagney captured my pleasant attention since for once he was acting and not making a bully of himself. 13 must be measured against its' historical contribution to movies. It does help explain the American fear of Nazi and Japanese spies at the onset of WWII. We, in fact, had no credible military intelligence until the OSS. As Hollywood's attempt through this film to continue WWII should have rated only 4 stars, however I gave it the extra 5th star because the German soldiers were not portrayed as inept morons. This is a very entertaining film viewed in an historical context.

Rating:
Summary: Cloak and Cagney go together . . .
Review: 13 RUE MADELEINE is one of Hollywood's last stand against the Axis--a post WWII film that explains our cloak and dagger OSS effort which helped whip those sneaky Nazis. The Cloak and Cagney go well together in this film. Cagney captured my pleasant attention since for once he was acting and not making a bully of himself. 13 must be measured against its' historical contribution to movies. It does help explain the American fear of Nazi and Japanese spies at the onset of WWII. We, in fact, had no credible military intelligence until the OSS. As Hollywood's attempt through this film to continue WWII should have rated only 4 stars, however I gave it the extra 5th star because the German soldiers were not portrayed as inept morons. This is a very entertaining film viewed in an historical context.

Rating:
Summary: A potentially good story goes nowhere
Review: 13 Rue Madeleine started out with potential. It opens at a British spy school (where everybody seems to be Americans or French) and the man in charge of schooling this batch of students (Cagney) is told one of the students is a spy and it's up to him to determine who. Some quick scenes of spy training are shown depicting some of the training techniques employed by such schools. This was probably the most interesting part of the film.

From there, the film jumps to graduation day and Cagney has determined who the spy is and is told to send this spy on a mission intended to decoy the Germans from the true date and location of the impending invasion of Europe. Things go wrong on this mission from the start and Cagney has to go in to clean up the mess.

The acting is only 'OK' by all but the mayor of a small French town and American actors play the German officers. They even speak English when speaking amongst themselves. While having 'Germans' speaking English detracts from the film, at least they spared us and didn't try to fake German accents. Furthermore, the Germans are depicted as being competent with their duties instead of bumbling idiots. For these reasons, the film rates two stars instead of only one.

However, this story missed out on so many chances to be a lot better. The spy is discovered from the start of the film and there are no tense moments at all. They could have written the film so that it appeared this one person was the spy but still left the possibility open for it to be somebody else. Furthermore, there are no tense moments in this film at all. There's no suspense and there's no action. It's just a bunch of actors going about living their lives.

Even when the German intellegence agents are onto what's going on the movie just jumps right to the plot point. There's a scene where the Germans are using radio direction finding equipment to triangulate the position of a British agent's broadcast and they find the agent within 10 seconds of the opening of the scene. Again, a lot of cat-and-mouse scenes could have been written into this story but as it is it's too flat - too linear. There's no drama, no suspense, and very little action. Not much to see here.

Rating:
Summary: A potentially good story goes nowhere
Review: 13 Rue Madeleine started out with potential. It opens at a British spy school (where everybody seems to be Americans or French) and the man in charge of schooling this batch of students (Cagney) is told one of the students is a spy and it's up to him to determine who. Some quick scenes of spy training are shown depicting some of the training techniques employed by such schools. This was probably the most interesting part of the film.

From there, the film jumps to graduation day and Cagney has determined who the spy is and is told to send this spy on a mission intended to decoy the Germans from the true date and location of the impending invasion of Europe. Things go wrong on this mission from the start and Cagney has to go in to clean up the mess.

The acting is only 'OK' by all but the mayor of a small French town and American actors play the German officers. They even speak English when speaking amongst themselves. While having 'Germans' speaking English detracts from the film, at least they spared us and didn't try to fake German accents. Furthermore, the Germans are depicted as being competent with their duties instead of bumbling idiots. For these reasons, the film rates two stars instead of only one.

However, this story missed out on so many chances to be a lot better. The spy is discovered from the start of the film and there are no tense moments at all. They could have written the film so that it appeared this one person was the spy but still left the possibility open for it to be somebody else. Furthermore, there are no tense moments in this film at all. There's no suspense and there's no action. It's just a bunch of actors going about living their lives.

Even when the German intellegence agents are onto what's going on the movie just jumps right to the plot point. There's a scene where the Germans are using radio direction finding equipment to triangulate the position of a British agent's broadcast and they find the agent within 10 seconds of the opening of the scene. Again, a lot of cat-and-mouse scenes could have been written into this story but as it is it's too flat - too linear. There's no drama, no suspense, and very little action. Not much to see here.

Rating:
Summary: Fine spy thriller set in France just before D-Day
Review: Henry Hathaway directs an enthralling, if traditional spy thriller about the OSS and the French Underground working together just before the D-Day Invasion. Jimmy Cagney and Richard Conte star, and are amazing in their roles. Annabella, aFrench star at the time, is included for authenticity but is wasted in hers. Locations, details, OSS methods, all contribute to the veracity of this film-it is interesting and suspenseful throughout. The good guys win, of course, but at a terrific price, and the perfectending is hampered by the Motion Picture Code'sprohibition of showing or suggesting real torture.

Rating:
Summary: O.S.S at work
Review: I don't care if this review is helpful or not. This film was made to show people what the Office of Statigic Services Did and was made for entertainment it is not a docuementary. Most of us have had a good time watching films about spies and enjoyed a good spy story. in 1947 the war was over for two years and a lot of people
still didn't know what went on or how it was fought and films like this showed people what the costs where and that people died.

Rating:
Summary: Cagney and WWII Heroics: A Great Combination
Review: It's 1944 and a team of OSS agents are being trained to parachute into France to locate a Nazi missile site. Washington learns that one of them is a spy. What will OSS do about it?

I enjoy these WWII espionage movies. Even when they're not too good, they're good. James Cagney is the trainer for the OSS team, and OSS discovers the identity of the spy. They hope to feed him false information before picking him up. But the team he's on is parachuted in, and only Cagney has the skills and knowledge to go in after the team, neutralize the enemy agent, keep the knowledge of other OSS agents from the Nazis, help get the missile information back to the allies and...well, you get the idea. But Cagney is captured, and if he talks the Nazis will know what has been discovered. The solution (Spoiler ahead for those who care about WWII movies): Bomb the prison where Cagney is being held before the Nazis can break him. Cagney knows this will be done and defies his Nazi torturers and the enemy agent while the bombs explode around him killing them all.

This movie has all the faults one would expect of its type and time. The heroics are sometimes overstated. The bad guys sneer. The good guys feel obliged to underline with moralistic statements the consequences of the tough decisions they must make.

This movie also has some first rate good points. Cagney gives a performance of such energy and directness that he sweeps much of the melodrama out of the way. The enemy agent, played by Richard Conte, turns out to be a very shrewd guy and even a little sympathetic. Sure, he allows Cagney to be beaten but at least he looks like he didn't want to. Conte is, in my view, a largely forgotten but excellent actor who spent a good deal of his career in the Forties and Fifties playing second leads or leads in second-rate movies. If you don't recognize his name, he was the scheming don in The Godfather who was behind the effort to take apart the Corleone family, and who was shot by the false cop while he tried to run away up the stairs. Henry Hathaway's direction keeps the film moving at a very brisk pace. There aren't any slow spots.

I suppose this isn't a movie most will feel a need to add to their collection. But, if you're like me, viewing this film is a little like meeting an old friend you'd forgotten about. I'm glad I have it.

Rating:
Summary: 13 Rue Madeleine
Review: One of the few DVD's I regret buying. This film demonstrates clearly that Cagney was one of the worst actors of all time. He is so wooden. He even walks stiffly. The others characters are so sterotypic that it is comic. The only good acting jobs are the German spy and French mayor. In addition, there is an off screen narrator with a strident, metallic voice who makes a bad movie even worse.

Rating:
Summary: A lamb is ready ....
Review: This isn't a great movie. It is however, a good movie. THe potential is there for it to be great, but it doesn't rise to the occasion.

The story might have been more engaging if it weren't done documentary style. Small things, such as the French and German characters speaking with the appropriate accents, would have improved the films quality.

I do however like the fact that there are no cheesy romantic subplots. It is also nice to see the Axis powers (in this case the Germans) being portrayed as competent individuals, rather than buffoons as so many other movies of the era do.

Ultimately, this movie is a must addition to my collection because of my love of Cagney. Originally, I had only seen the final scene of this movie when it was on AMC. I will not give it away, but I was so engaged by Cagney's laugh and the look on his face given the circumstances in the last minute of the film, I bought the film. If you're a Cagney fan, I don't think you'll be dissapointed. His performance is quite good. If you're not, then I think I'd skip this one.