A different way of telling a story

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

13 Rue Madeleine (1947)This movie starts slowly and gets gradually better as it goes, until a gripping final half hour and a shocking, dramatic ending. So it's worth the ride, and worth seeing James Cagney who is at the top of his game here (he is about to make his masterpiece, White Heat, after 15 years of gangster portrayals.) Of course here his tough guy persona is put to use for the good of us all, a patriot training a group of high level war time spies. The Nazis are brutal, and World War II is unrelenting, so even this highly skilled people die. It's a reminder how tragic the war was. It is made to be exciting and even fascinating, but most of all dangerous.Though purely fiction, for legal reasons (the pre-CIA OSS spy organization didn't want too much revealed in the movie), the filming is meant to seem realistic in a documentary way, and it begins with an authoritative voice-over and what looks like some vintage footage. This "information" is given for too long a time, and if you are not a war expert, or even know what WWII was all about, this will be too gripping. But eventually the leads all start to take on real roles, and they move from their training in the U.S. (it was filmed in Quebec City, actually), to behind enemy lines. This is then really great stuff.Director Henry Hathaway followed this same format (even with the title) in the 1945 The House on 92nd Street and it has some of the same flaws, and the same kind of superb second half. And a year later he did a third in the same mode, Call Northside 777. It was a successful formula for a public learning about its own federal level spy and police forces, Hathaway was a really good director, and we all wish he had taken these films in the direction of Kiss of Death, which is a gem, but he didn't, probably because of producers with ideas of their own, and so we have this trio of offbeat films with only parts that are amazing. Which isn't so bad.

20 Century Fox's 13 RUE MADELEINE (1947) is not only a well liked Hollywood Noir but is an excellent espionage thriller too. Produced by newsreel expert Louis de Rochemont for the studio it was flawlessly directed by the always reliable Henry Hathaway who had that same year just completed his brilliant "Kiss Of Death" - the picture that introduced Richard Widmark to audiences. 13 RUE MADELEINE had that distinctive documentary/newsreel style to it that de Rochemont had started to bring to films in 1945 with "The House On 92nd Street" and the splendid "Boomerang" which he produced just before MADELEINE. And to crisply shoot the picture, in brilliantly lit Monochrome, he retained his great Cinematographer Norbert Brodine as well as utilizing the same impressive voice of Reed Hadley (uncredited) to narrate the opening of the movie("What is past is prologue").James Cagney (on loan from Warners) is Bob Sharkey a director of training operations for 077 (pseudonym for O.S.S. - Office of Stratigic Services) agents of Secret Intelligence during WW2. Three of the trainees are chosen for a mission in occupied France. They must locate a German rocket launching site so it can be destroyed in a bombing raid by the Air Corps before D-Day. Things are going well until it is discovered that one of the three is a German agent who all along was a plant in the training school. Then - while on route to France -one of the group is murdered by the Nazi agent and with no time to train another it falls to Sharkey himself to fill the void and carry on with the mission.Cagney is terrific in it! He gives his usual finger-snapping performance with that cocky sure-footed persona that is ever appealing. Excellent too is the marvellous Sam Jaffe as a resistance leader and Richard Conte is very effective as the double agent. Unconvincing though is Frank Latimore as the ill-fated agent and Annabella's role is written out of the movie just that bit too early. Also watch out for E.G.Marshall (uncredited) as a Resistance fighter in what is only his second film appearance and Karl Malden (uncredited) as the plane's jump master in his third film part.A nice little war time thriller from a good screenplay by John Monks Jr. and Sy Bartlett that is well complimented with a score by David Buttolph which features a spirited patriotic march. The picture is also notable for being one of the first films to show an actor performing some Judo movements or Karate as we would refer to it today. 13 RUE MADELEINE has hardly dated at all and is worthy of a place in any collection.

O.S.S. agents are in training for work behind enemy lines in WWII. Upon receiving his latest batch of trainees, training leader Bob Sharkey is informed one of the rookies is actually a German mole. Letting the mole continue thinking he is undetected, Sharkey feeds the mole false information about important upcoming operations. But as Sharkey arranges his agents missions, and that of the mole, things go wrong and Sharkey himself must go into occupied France and risk the wrath of the Gestapo at 13 Rue Madeleine.13 Rue Madeleine is a very efficient and enjoyable War/Spy/Thriller, it's directed by multi genre helmsman Henry Hathaway and stars acting legend James Cagney as Sharkey. Tho playing a tough guy, this is quite far removed from the sort of roles that defined Cagney's career, he's ably supported by Richard Conte and Walter Abel, but in all honesty it's Cagney's film all the way. As many other reviewers have mentioned, the majority of the picture feels like a documentary, or more a sort of public service explanation on the History Channel, not a bad thing exactly, but the dulcet narration is something I personally could have done without. However once the picture nicely turns its attention to the crucial mission, things start heating up and the film becomes a film in the truer sense of the word. We are fully engaged with the central characters having been with them thru Sharkey's training school, and as the (fabulous) ending draws closer, it's hoped that the majority of viewers are as involved with the plot as I personally was. Because then when the end does come, it impacts the way the makers hoped it would.A very commendable picture and certainly recommended to fans of Cagney, Conte and this type of movie. 7/10

Two actors that were left off the cast list on the web page and who later on became famous actors in their own right is Karl Malden (Streetcar Named Desire), and E.G. Marshall who I don't think spoke a word during this movie. Malden, who was known for his role on TV's the "Streets of San Francisco played the crew chief on the aircraft used to parachute the OSS agents into France. I think he asked them if they'd like some hot coffee which they refused. E.G. Marshall played one of the French resistance men. Marshall played with hundreds of well known actors in his day and even had a well known TV program (The Defenders) in which he played a lawyer. I also remember him playing an old Senator opposite Clint Eastwood in "Absolute Power". They should be added to the cast and cross-referenced to their own web page.