13 Rue Madeleine (1947)

User Rating:

7.0/10   

Director:

Henry Hathaway

Writers:

John Monks Jr. (original screenplay) and
Sy Bartlett (original screenplay)

Release Date:

3 March 1947 (Sweden)

Genre:

Action | Adventure | Drama | Thriller | War

Plot:

When spy chief Bob Sharkey finds out one of his agents-in-training is actually a Nazi double agent, his strategic decision not to arrest him results in tragedy.

Plot Keywords:

Spy | Double Agent | Nazi | WWII | France

Cast

James Cagney	...	Robert Emmett 'Bob' Sharkey
Annabella	...	Suzanne de Beaumont
Richard Conte	...	William H. 'Bill' O'Connell
Frank Latimore	...	Jeff Lassiter
Walter Abel	...	Charles Gibson
Melville Cooper	...	Pappy Simpson
Sam Jaffe	...	Mayor Galimard
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Dick Gordon	...	Psychiatrist (scenes deleted)
Horace McMahon	...	Burglary Instructor (scenes deleted)

Runtime:

95 min

Country:

USA

Language:

French | English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Mirrophonic Recording)

Certification:

Argentina:Atp | UK:U | Canada:PG | Finland:K-16 | USA:Approved (PCA #11740, General Audience)

Filming Locations:

Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Company:

Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation

Trivia:

Rex Harrison turned down the lead role in 13 Rue Madeleine (1947).

Goofs:

Factual errors: The file on William O'Connell, the Nazi spy Kuncel (Richard Conte) hiding in an OSS-like unit, lists his birthday as July 13, 1914, and his age as 32, pushing the action of the movie to the summer of 1946 at the earliest - but the story is set in the months before D-Day, the spring of 1944, and Kuncel-O'Connell would have to be under 30.

Quotes:

Robert Emmett 'Bob' Sharkey: If he isn't sold and should in any way suspect that you're on a double mission, if he does make his break and tries to follow you, you're going to shoot him.
Jeff Lassiter: Shoot him?
Jeff Lassiter: [clearly disturbed by the thought] Tha-That's rough! Tha...
Robert Emmett 'Bob' Sharkey: That's war... and that's your mission!
Jeff Lassiter: Yeah.
Robert Emmett 'Bob' Sharkey: O'Connell can do it. Can you?
Jeff Lassiter: Yeah, I can do it.
Robert Emmett 'Bob' Sharkey: That's all for now.
Jeff Lassiter: Right.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Monkeybone (2001)

High Quality WWII Espionage Thriller

It gets off to a terrible start. An off-screen narrator, in a strict, authoritarian tone, announces to us lowly viewers that the film is a "tribute to the accomplishments by the U.S. Army Intelligence in WWII". Beyond this dreadful introduction, however, a credible story about American espionage, wrapped in a high quality cinematic package, provides viewers with a worthwhile payoff.

Bob Sharkey (James Cagney) trains young men and women to be American secret agents. These "077 candidates" go through tough physical and mental tests. Candidates who succeed are then sent on military intelligence assignments overseas. But one of those being trained by Sharkey is a German mole, working for Hitler.

In the film's first half, Sharkey finds the mole. The second half plot follows Sharkey's efforts both to deactivate the mole, and to find a man named Duclois, the builder of a German rocket depot, a facility constructed to launch bombs against England, and located in Nazi-occupied France. The mole, headquartered in an imposing building at 13 Rue Madeleine in the French port city of Le Havre, cleverly makes Sharkey's double mission difficult. And the film ends with a riveting climax that is surprisingly realistic for a 1940's film.

Cagney gives a really good performance. The film's screenplay allows for sufficient character development, unusual for WWII films. And with tight editing, the plot zips along at a fast pace, covering a lot of story material, so that viewers need to pay attention or risk missing important plot details.

Except for that awful prologue, everything about "13 Rue Madeleine" is high quality: the costumes, the dialogue, the B&W cinematography, and especially the acting and the editing. Director Henry Hathaway even uses authentic locales, further elevating the film's overall quality.

As a WWII espionage thriller, I cannot think of a better film than "13 Rue Madeleine".