New Picture

13 Rue Madeleine (20th Century-Fox) is the third spy thriller to be culled from the wartime hush-hush files of the Office of Strategic Services. This one bests both its predecessors (Paramount's O.S.S., Warner's Cloak & Dagger) by a wide margin. In fact, it is as good, nerve-racking fun as any spy chase since The House on 92nd Street, which was worked on by the same competent team (Producer Louis de Rochemont, Director Henry Hathaway, Writer John Monks Jr.).

Producer de Rochemont, who made the first MARCH OF TIME (1934) and produced that series for almost a decade, uses his know-how as a documentary-maker to put realistic punch into his entertainment. Rue Madeleine begins with well-chosen scraps of newsreel, a commentator's voice, recognizable glimpses of actual Washington streets and buildings. By the time they are introduced, the actors (James Cagney, Annabella, Richard Conte. Frank Latimore) have already half won their make-believe battle. Concentrating on the fascinating business of learning how to be a spy, the movie wisely ignores phony romantic trimmings.

Cagney is as tough and unlovable a little spy-instructor as he was a public enemy. Annabella is as pretty as any female agent need be, but she parachutes into occupied France, goes briskly about her hazardous work and never once bats an eyelash at either Nazi or Ally. All the French streets and London buildings in Rue Madeleine were photographed in Quebec and New England. Now that studio technicians have learned how to reproduce everything from the Gare du Nord to the Himalayas right in Hollywood,* Producer de Rochemont is plugging for the revolutionary theory that everything--rooms, street scenes, shipyards, etc.--should be shot on the actual spot and not on phony sets. Some experts do not agree that the De Rochemont method saves any money, but there is no argument that his scenes have a look of reality seldom reproduced by a studio backdrop.

* For a scene in Variety Girl, a movie about backstage Hollywood, Paramount was reported to be constructing a life-sized sound stage replica of its own studio gate.

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