In response to a radio broadcast request for photographs of France, mother of three Odette Sansom sends a letter to the Admiralty, but an addressing mistake brings her to the attention of the Special Operations Executive, who need French people to go back to their homeland as espionage agents. She completes her training in September 1942 and is sent to France. She travels to Cannes, where she is met by Captain Peter Churchill, her superior. She also meets "Arnauld", another agent. Her first assignment is to go to Marseilles to pick up plans for the docks there. Barely warned in time of a raid organized by Abwehr Colonel Henri in Cannes, Odette, Peter and Arnauld are forced to relocate to Annecy, where they rendezvous with Jacques. Learning of the Maquis, Peter requests arms, medicines, etc. for them. He is then recalled to London. A large airdrop of supplies is arranged. Later, however, Henri finds Odette in Annecy. From a captured agent, he has learned all about Odette's network and claims that he and others, disaffected with Hitler, wish to make contact with the British. However, she suspects otherwise and orders the other agents to disperse. Shortly after Peter returns to France, she and Peter are captured in Annecy by Henri and eventually taken to Fresnes Prison, near Paris; Arnauld was away when the hotel where they were staying was raided. Odette is tortured by the Gestapo, but does not break and is sentenced to death. An apologetic Henri visits her; at her request, he arranges for her to see Peter one last time, though she hides her fate from him. She is then taken to Ravensbrück concentration camp on 26 July 1944 and immediately placed in solitary confinement. The Germans believe Odette's lies about Peter, that he is related to Winston Churchill and that she was the brains of the network, while he was a playboy dilettante, and he is merely imprisoned. With Germany invaded and collapsing, on 16 April 1945, the camp commandant is ordered to execute his prisoners, but he orders a subordinate to see to Odette's safety. When the inmates learn that Hitler is dead, they riot. A guard comes for Odette; she believes she is to be executed, but the commandant instead takes her to the advancing Americans, believing another of her lies, that she is Peter's wife and therefore related to the British Prime Minister. Back in England, she is reunited with Peter. The end of the film contains a title card saying as follows:
"It is with a sense of deep humility that I allow my personal story to be told. I am a very ordinary woman to whom a chance was given to see human beings at their best and at their worst. I knew kindness as well as cruelty, understanding as well as brutality. My comrades, who did far more than I and suffered far more profoundly, are not here to speak. It is to their memory that this film has been made and I would like it to be a window through which may be seen those very gallant women with whom I had the honour to serve."
The film was directed by Herbert Wilcox, and the screenplay by Warren Chetham-Strode was based on Jerrard Tickell's non-fiction bookOdette: The Story of a British Agent. It was jointly produced by the husband and wife team Herbert Wilcox and Anna Neagle. Neagle was originally reluctant to play the role so Wilcox offered it to Michèle Morgan and Ingrid Bergman, both of whom turned it down. Eventually when the real Odette suggested Neagle play her, Neagle agreed. Both Odette Sansom and Peter Churchill served as technical advisors during the filming, and the film ends with a written message from Odette herself. Samson and Neagle spent considerable time in France, visiting locales associated with the story. Samson later said that Neagle "was absolutely into it. In fact it took one year after the end of the film to get back to normal, she was more upset by doing that film than I was reliving the experience." Sansom said that she lobbied intensely for the film not to be made in Hollywood, for fear that it would be fictionalised, and that she was pleased by the result.
Reception
It premiered at a Royal Command Film Performance before King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at the Plaza Cinema, London on 6 June 1950.
Box Office
The film was the fourth most popular movie at the British box office in 1950. According to Kinematograph Weekly the 'biggest winners' at the box office in 1950 Britain were The Blue Lamp, The Happiest Days of Your Life, Annie Get Your Gun, The Wooden Horse, Treasure Island and Odette, with "runners up" being Stage Fright, White Heat, They Were Not Divided, Trio, Morning Departure, Destination Moon, Sands of Iwo Jima, Little Women, The Forsythe Saga, Father of the Bride, Neptune's Daughter, The Dancing Years, The Red Light, Rogues of Sherwood Forest, Fancy Pants, Copper Canyon, State Secret, The Cure for Love, My Foolish Heart, Stromboli, Cheaper by the Dozen, Pinky, Three Came Home, Broken Arrow and Black Rose. Wilcox later said it was his most profitable film.
Critical
New York Times critic Bosley Crowther said that the film portrays "a pretty punk secret agent" who "lacks the wit or caution to avoid a most obvious trap that is set for her" by Henri. Crowther wrote that "the point of the picture, so far as we can see, is to get Miss Neagle into prison, as quickly as possible, so she can suffer elaborately. And this she does, like the stalwart and noble lady-actress that she is. For the rest of the picture, Miss Neagle is tortured—and so are we."
