Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Good concept, poorly executed.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

SECRET MISSION is a routinely-plotted WW2 propaganda movie, made in Britain and set in occupied France. The plot is about a hodge podge of British spies and French resistance members who enter France in order to find out information about the enemy's local resources so that a secret invasion might take place.This is one of those films which offers up a little bit of everything. There's romance here, some humour, suspense, and action too for the gung-ho crowd. What I liked most about it was the fact that the heroic characters have greater depth than normal by genre standards, so you end up caring about their plight. James Mason in particular stands out as a sympathetic fellow. The film starts off a bit slow but gets better and better as it goes on, building to a truly satisfying climax.

As if the writers took a "paint by number" book to create the screenplay, all the clichés of World War II "why we fight" stories are present in this tale of the French resistance. What makes it a bit more interesting is the presence of James Mason and Michael Wilding before them became Hollywood film stars. Mason gets a French accent (which sometimes sounds German) but Wilding gets to be totally British. Most of the French characters speak with a British dialect which makes Mason's accent more obvious. The only real interesting plot development concerns secret resistance members who obviously had slowly won the confidence of the Germans but were secretly working against them, making them enemies of their own people until that is exposed. Of course, you can't help but root for the resistance and cheer every time the Nazis are foiled and land back on their axis. It is obvious that this type of film cheered up the Allies enormously during the war and left them satisfied and motivated when they left the theater.

James Mason delivers perhaps the worst performance of his career in this incredibly mediocre intriguer directed by Harold French. Mason plays Raoul de Carnot, a Free French soldier who returns to his native land to plot against the Nazi occupiers with the help of his family and three British agents. Mason, who herein resembles a rictus grinning caricature of Frank Sinatra, emotes with one of the worst French accents ever captured on celluloid. Don't get me wrong: this is not a broad, Inspector Clouseau-ish accent, it's just a dreadful, unconvincing stab at Franglais. Mason seems to know it, to: he barely acts in the film and sheepishly mumbles his way from scene to scene. Secret Mission is also cheaply made (watch for the model boat chugging across a miniature set in an early scene) and badly written by future Bond-helmer Terence Young, but it's Mason who is the cerise sur le gateau. The whole thing would be a lot more fun if he'd been costumed in a stripy shirt and told to periodically nibble on a baguette.

I'm sure that viewed during the war it was taken seriously but viewed today, with a critical eye, and I don't mean an aesthetic eye, its absurdity is what is called camp. It was only watching this film that I realized that the British TV series 'allo! 'allo! (1982-1992) was a broad parody. The central characters are two veddy veddy British chaps in trench coats wandering around in and out of the woods. Always in their trench coats. There's the cafe run by a Cockney in a beret always at odds with his wife. All we need is for the local flick to drop by and say "Good moaning". Even though people took this seriously at the time it boggles the mind to think people could really believe espionagewas actually conducted this way. For fans of the TV series this is a must not miss. I just wonder how stoned Croft and Lloyd were after seeing this film on TV 30+ years after having seen it in a West End cinema and realizing how absurd it all was and how they didn't notice 30 years before.