13 Rue Madeleine **** (1947, James Cagney, Annabella, Richard Conte, Frank Latimore) – Classic Movie Review 2602

Director Henry Hathaway’s 1947 wartime spy thriller stars James Cagney, Annabella, Richard Conte and Frank Latimore. Like the previous year’s Cloak and Dagger, it is a tribute to Office of Strategic Services (OSS) operations in occupied Europe during World War Two.

Hollywood studios, prohibited from mentioning the OSS during the war through secrecy, made several films about the agency after the war. This excellent example is a believably acted and pacy movie, with a strongly realistic atmosphere and plenty of tension throughout.

Conte and Latimore are among the small, plucky band of American secret agents from a fictional spy organisation who go hunting for a Nazi bomb base in France. But one of the band is traitor in this pretty sharply made, credible, exciting film, based on the famous March of Time series.

Cagney plays Bob Sharkey, an instructor of the 77th group of espionage agent candidates to be trained in the US to infiltrate Nazi-occupied Europe. He is alerted that one of the students is a German agent and told to identify the person.

[Spoiler alert] Sharkey’s boss, Charles Gibson (Walter Abel), confirms that Conte is not Bill O’Connell but actually Wilhelm Kuncel, one of Germany’s top agents but tells Sharkey to pass him, intending to give him false information.

Cagney rivets the audience’s attention as the training officer who first coaches the new agents and then follows the brave boys when they get into trouble in Europe. And he is ably supported by exceptional turns from a strong, ensemble cast, including Abel, Melville Cooper, Sam Jaffe, Blanche Yurka, E G Marshall, Red Buttons, Karl Malden, Judith Lowry, Marcel Rousseau, Dick Wessel and Roland Winters.

Fine though Cagney and the others are, it is a chilling Conte who steals this taut and gripping movie as the traitor.

The title refers to the Le Havre address where a Gestapo headquarters is located. Much of the filming was done in Quebec City.

Cagney was to have played a character based on William Donovan, wartime head of the OSS, but he objected to the film, especially the idea that his agency had been infiltrated by an enemy agent. So the spy group was renamed O77 and Cagney’s character had no similarities to Donovan.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2602

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