13 Rue Madeleine

A neat World War II thriller, 13 Rue Madeleine benefits from the postwar craze for shooting outside the studio. With Quebec doubling for occupied France, this is a spy movie with a sense of open air. James Cagney plays an OSS agent, training his recruits for an important pre-D-Day mission. When one of them turns out to be a Nazi spy, Cagney must parachute into France himself and straighten things out. Director Henry Hathaway and producer Louis de Rochemont pioneered the docu-drama approach with The House on 92nd Street, and they again use newsreel footage and stentorian narrator here, blended into the fictional story. The script is slightly muddled, but there are a fistful of suspenseful situations and a gangbusters ending--as well as the typically wired-up Cagney, who is exactly the guy you want on your side if D-Day is hanging in the balance. --Robert Horton

Movie Details

Cast: James Cagney, Roland Belanger, Richard Conte, Frank Latimore, Walter Abel, Melville Cooper, Sam Jaffe, James Craven, Richard H. Gordon, Alexander Kirkland, Alfred Linder, Ben Low, Don Randolph, Marcel Rousseau, Blanche Yurka, Peter Von Zerneck, Fred Nurney, Otto Reichow, Henry Rowland, Coby Neal, Albert D'Arno
Running time: 95 min.
DVD Aspect Ratios: 1.33:1