Perfectly adorable

Admirable film.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

From the B picture unit at 20th Century Fox, Tonight We Raid Calais has John Sutton as an RAF pilot on the ground doing a bit of spotting for the RAF. Where he's doing it is in occupied France and out of uniform.RAF high command wants to make sure it hits a factory building tanks so Sutton has the job of locating it and lighting the way for the RAF night attack. But a woman who is unhappy because her brother was killed by the British at Oran after the Vichy government drafted him could gum up his plans. Annabella has no love for the occupying Germans except for the sex she's forced to give up to a rather brutish Wehrmacht sergeant played by Howard DaSilva.A couple of outstanding performances also come from those playing Annabella's parents. Lee J. Cobb and Beulah Bondi especially from Bondi who innocently betrays Sutton to the enemy. Tonight We Raid Calais is your typical wartime flag waver. The writer is Waldo Salt of the infamous Hollywood Ten. Look all you want to see if there was anything that got the old mastodons on the House Un-American Activities Committee aroused.I think all you'll find is a decent action flick.

Excellent photography is the star of this World War II propaganda actioneer where an English flier, posing as a Frenchman, plots to alert the allies to the location of a German factory in the French countryside with the help of the locales, willing to loose their farms in order to end the Nazi occupation. John Sutton, taking over on the "B" front for 20th Century Fox's usual "A" lead Tyrone Power, is excellent as he convinces the locales to help him, finding instant animosity with the pretty Annabella, afraid of Nazi retaliation against her family. Lee J. Cobb and Beaulah Bondi are her courageous parents, with Blanche Yurka playing a more noble version of her "A Tale of Two Cities" character Madame DeFarge and Ann Codee (a softer version of Yurka who sounds almost like her) playing other locales. Short and sweet at just over an hour, this has some excellent action sequences, brisk editing and lots of rousing flag-waving, even if it is typical of many films of this period. Some of the Nazi cruelty is genuinely shocking, with Howard da Silva standing out as a German officer who has his eye on Annabella.

While "Tonight We Raid Calais" isn't the most realistic film and it smacks very hard of a wartime propaganda flick, it is well made and worth seeing."Tonight We Raid Calais" begins with a soldier being called out of a meet for a special assignment. I liked this scene as when you hear various names called out, one was 'Chateaubriand'---which is a type of tenderloin steak. I think someone slipped this one in as a joke. But the special assignment is not a joke--a French-speaking British soldier is sent to pinpoint a German weapons factory so that bombers can hone in one it. Once in France, however, it becomes clear that while most are patriotic and hate their German overlords, some are more than willing to save their own sorry skins by appeasing their new masters. Will the soldier's assignment succeed...and will he pick up a hot French lady at the same time? Overall, the film does what it was intended to do--shore up support for the war effort. While it's not brilliant, it's well made, interesting and different. Worth seeing--especially so you can see Lee J. Cobb play a Frenchman! Annabella (Mrs. Tyrone Power)By the way, the leading lady, Annabella, was married to Tyrone Power.

Production values are very basic in this quickly made WW II soft-propaganda effort. The writing is wooden and predictable with the appropriate highs and lows considering the patriotic terrain of 1942-43. There were hundreds of these films made--inexpensive, short and fit right into the lower half of a double feature--the meat and potatoes of the time. There is a U.S. War Bonds logo at the end of the film, and as I remember it, they would actually go around in the movie house and collect for the war effort. John Sutton manages to make a payday with his acting, and a young Lee J. Cobb (made up to look older!) does show signs of his later greatness. Annabella's part is so contrived, that it would have challenged a far better actress to make it work. To the history of propaganda cinema buffs, "Calais" should hold one's interest.