everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

13 RUE MADELEINE is a good war effort telling of corruption and espionage in Nazi-occupied Holland. It stars former gangster actor James Cagney as a man who is tasked with training some secret service agents to be parachuted into Holland to retrieve a figure crucial to the Allied cause. However, a series of events including betrayal and murder eventually lead to a mission of revenge, one that is fraught with danger.This film was directed by the reliable Henry Hathaway and is a visually impressive movie. One key parachuting sequence is hair-raising stuff but there's plenty of suspense and incident throughout to keep you watching. Cagney is a good lead here and acquits himself well physically in some strong fight sequences. Richard Conte has a memorable supporting role. The abrupt ending is certainly one to be remembered too.

'Fair play? That's out. Years of decency and honest living? Forget all about them...Because the enemy can forget, and has.'One of a small number of movies appearing in the immediate post-war years, made in tribute to the wartime activities of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). However, in this instance, when its former head, William Donovan, learned that Cagney was to play a character largely based on him, and that the proposed story-line had the unit infiltrated by an enemy agent, the producers were forced to rename the group 'O77' and ensure the main protagonist bore no similarity to him. Instead, Cagney's character of Bob Sharkey was loosely modeled on the exploits of the film's technical adviser, Peter Ortiz, a former OSS operative, who himself had parachuted into France in August 1944 and been captured by the Nazis. It is hard to imagine Rex Harrison, who thankfully turned down the role, portraying this athletic and dynamic former agent tasked with training agents to be sent into occupied territories and in wrong- footing the mole in their ranks. Whereas Cagney, who at one time was the top Caucasian Judo black belt in the country, brought a touch of realism to the physical training and one-on-one combat. In this he is aided by the stalwart directorial presence of ever-reliable Henry Hathaway. Yet, it is Richard Conte, as the Nazi mole to whom Sharkey has to feed misinformation about Allied invasion plans, who upstages all others. With regards to the rest of the principal members of the cast, Frank Latimore, a second-tier leading man of 20th Century Fox in the forties, offers one of his more creditable performances as the wide-eyed and ill-fated recruit who unwittingly befriends, and falls victim to the Nazi infiltrator. Despite a couple of such able appearances, he struggled to gain recognition in Hollywood, confining the majority of his career to Spanish and Italian swashbucklers. Equally noteworthy is the presence of French actress, and wife of Tyrone Power, Annabella, in what would be her final Hollywood venture. No mere defenceless female stereotype of the movies of the time, her French wife, seeking answers to her missing husband's fate, endures the rigorous training regime, and parachutes into enemy territory alongside her male companions. Indeed, her character's end, courageously operating her radio-set to safeguard the mission whilst under heavy fire, is an early indication that this bleak story-line would break with conventional expectations in not supplying a happy ending. Finally, in one of his less celebrated roles, Sam Jaffe adroitly portrays the Normandy mayor desperately warning his citizens of Nazi reprisals while secretly acting as head of the local Resistance fighters. As for Cagney himself he provides his charismatic presence, and despite his incongruous appearance in trying to pass himself off as a Vichy civil servant, largely convinces. It is his entry into the action, parachuting into occupied France to prevent the unveiling of his team's true mission which marks the film's turning point. The major flaw of the production is its mock documentary style which makes the first third of the movie sluggish. The same team of writer, producer, and director had enjoyed great commercial success with the same format for the previous year's 'The House on 92nd Street'. Indeed, producer, Louis de Rochemont, had made his reputation and been garlanded by the Academy for his work in documentaries, especially those unveiling the evils of the Nazi regime in the mid- 30s. Though not Cagney's typical vehicle, there is still room for his trademark sneer as he and his interrogators realise that Sharkey's superiors are prepared to sacrifice their man with an aerial bombardment of the local SS headquarters - the address of the title.

I'll get back to the review title later.This is an exciting WWII espionage film, shot in neorealist, semi-documentary style and manages to be tensely exciting. It really strains believability that newly trained, untried agents would be assigned the very critical and difficult missions that the lead actors are given, especially because the narration at the movie's beginning says they are the latest of 77 groups of recruits to be trained. What were the other 76 groups doing? The story is that Bob Sharkey (James Cagney), master spy, is asked to come to the place where class 77 of the OSS, precursor to the CIA, is being trained. His superior, Charles Gibson (Walter Abel)tells him there is a German spy among the class and wants Sharkey to figure out which one of the class is the spy. So Gibson already knows, he is just looking for verification.During this time you get to see how the OSS recruits are trained. They must be observant both visually and audibly, good and fast at communications, able to think on their feet, able to blend in with Europeans down to the way that they eat, and physically fit. You'll figure out who the agent is by his over the top likability and the film's focus on him. How does Sharkey figure it out? The German agent is at the top of his class - he's seen all of this stuff before, he is too good. Plus Sharkey looks at the way the spy finishes the final exam - a pair of agents including the spy are charged with getting the technical specs on a detonator at a nearby military installation, and when caught the spy pretends to be undercover security, slugs his partner, and claims he is taking him in for questioning - but they DID get the specs on a tiny camera made to look like a matchbox, and they got away. Sharkey claims that "a pair of American kids would slug their way out together".So do they arrest the German spy? No, because the plan is to feed the spy a bunch of false information about the upcoming "D-Day", have him parachute behind enemy lines with a group of real OSS agents, and then figure he will high tail it back to German high command with a bunch of bogus information on the upcoming allied invasion. Well, if everything went according to plans we would have no movie, right? So when things go terribly wrong, Bob Sharkey decides to go behind enemy lines himself and try to right things as much as he can, since class 077 has no idea that a Nazi knows everything about them and their methods. I'll let you watch and find out what happens. It will keep you guessing right up to the end in trying to figure out who is friend and who is foe, who is a blithering idiot puppet for the Nazis, and who is just doing an "I Claudius" in order to help the allies.Now for an explanation of the review title. If you think that the final scene and Cagney's expression and attitude are too much like "White Heat", realize that this film was made three years before that more famous film, so just remember who might have been copying who.

Good WWII espionage tale has secret agent James Cagney training a group of recruits. One of them turns out to be a German double agent. Instead of arresting the spy, Cagney feeds them false information. But this doesn't turn out as planned and Cagney has to go after the agent himself.Solid cast backing up Cagney, who's great as usual. Richard Conte, Walter Abel, Melville Cooper, and Sam Jaffe are all quality actors. Lovely French actress Annabella is quite good, too. Karl Malden, Red Buttons, and E.G. Marshall all have uncredited bit parts. I enjoyed the scenes of the agents receiving their training, which was varied to say the least. I'm a sucker for minutiae, I guess. My favorite part of this was when the agents had to listen to a sound and pick what it was between two choices. For example, "a jungle bird or a falling bomb." I'm not quite sure what practical purpose this sort of training has but it sure was amusing to watch. The government agency in the movie is called O77 but it's really supposed to be the OSS (Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor to the CIA). Apparently the head of the OSS objected to the part of the movie that had an enemy agent infiltrating his organization, so the studio changed the name to O77.