Secret Mission
| Secret Mission | |
|---|---|
_DVD_cover.jpg) UK DVD cover | |
| Directed by | Harold French |
| Screenplay by | Anatole de Grunwald Basil Bartlett |
| Story by | Terence Young |
| Produced by | Marcel Hellman |
| Starring | Hugh Williams James Mason Carla Lehmann Roland Culver |
| Cinematography | Bernard Knowles |
| Edited by | Edward B. Jarvis |
| Music by | Mischa Spoliansky |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | General Film Distributors (UK) |
Release dates |
1945 (France) |
Running time | 94 min.[1] |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Box office | 1,759,641 admissions (France)[2] |
Secret Mission is a 1942 British war film directed by Harold French and starring Hugh Williams, James Mason, Nancy Price, Carla Lehmann and Roland Culver.
Plot
During the Second World War, two British army officers, Garnett and Gowan, together with Private Clark, who used to live in France and ran a café with his French wife, and Raoul, a member of the Free French forces, are dropped off on the coast of occupied France. Their mission is to collect intelligence on German military strength in the area, prior to an airborne raid. They rendezvous at the chateau used as German headquarters, which is Raoul's ancestral home. His sister Michele still lives there, but is resigned to cooperation with the occupiers, and is too frightened to assist in the men's mission.
As part of the mission, Garnett and Gowan masquerade as champagne salesmen, aided by a personal letter from Ribbentrop. Having thus established their bona fides, they do deals with German officers for supplying their mess. They also extract much information from the unwary Germans. They also discover that a local businessman, M. Fayolle, hated by some of the locals for his open collaboration with the occupying forces, is in fact secretly working with the French resistance and has assisted many Allied servicemen to escape.
The agents manage to gain access to a secret factory, which is so well disguised that it cannot be bombed, and show a light for arriving paratroopers, who land and overrun the factory. However, Raoul is killed.
As the other agents embark by boat to return to England, Michele refuses an offer to leave with them and promises to start working with the Resistance.[3]
Cast
- Hugh Williams as Major Peter Garnett
- James Mason as Raoul de Carnot
- Carla Lehmann as Michele de Carnot
- Roland Culver as Captain 'Red' Gowan
- Michael Wilding as Private 'Nobby' Clark
- Nancy Price as Violette, housekeeper
- Karel Stepanek as Major Lang
- Fritz Wendhausen as General von Reichman (as F.R. Wendhausen)
- Betty Warren as Lulu Clark
- Percy Walsh as M. Fayolle
- Anita Gombault as Estelle Fayolle
- Nicholas Stuart as Captain Mackenzie
- John Salew as Hauptmann Gruening
- Yvonne Andre as Martine, money collector
- David Page as Rene de Carnot, boy
- Brefni O'Rorke as Village Priest
- Beatrice Varley as British Cook
- Stewart Granger as Sub-Lieutenant Jackson
- Oscar Ebelsbacher as Provost Officer
- Herbert Lom as Medical Officer
References
- ^ BFI: Secret Mission, run time Linked 2012-10-14
- ^ French box office figures for 1945 at Box Office Story
- ^ "BFI | Film & TV Database | SECRET MISSION (1942)". Ftvdb.bfi.org.uk. 16 April 2009. Retrieved 6 October 2013.