Tonight We Raid Calais (1943)

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

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

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

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.

With bigger stars away fighting, it was John Sutton's chance at a good lead in "Tonight We Raid Calais," a 1943 film starring Annabella, Lee J. Cobb, Beulah Bondi, Blanche Yurka, and Howard da Silva.Sutton plays an Englishman, Geoffrey Carter, fluent in French, who is sent into Occupied France to find a German weapons factory so that it can be bombed. There are several factories, but only one is actually making anything.Carter lands in France, moves in with a family, and poses as the son who has come back from the service. Actually, the son, Philippe is dead, but only the villagers know this. It soon becomes evident that not everyone wants to help the English, in particular, Philippe's sister Odette (Annabella), who is in charge of the baby Philippe left behind, his wife having died in childbirth.At something like 71 minutes, this is a short film to have been the main feature. I suspect it was a second feature, as Darryl Zanuck had turned his back on Annabella's career after she married his major star, Tyrone Power, against his wishes. Annabella was probably very interested in this film, as her own brother had been killed by the Nazis, and she had been a wreck in the late '30s trying to get her mother and daughter out of France. During the war, she also entertained the troops, and she and Tyrone Power raised money for war orphans.Handsome John Sutton does a good job, and he's surrounded by a fine cast. Lee J. Cobb and Beulah Bondi play Odette's parents. It's a shame that Annabella's career was cut short by her marriage - she was a wonderful actress and a huge star in her native France. She's a real asset here.One reviewer on this site said that "everybody speaks English." Actually they don't, they're speaking French or German. As with plays by Chekov, one assumes everyone is speaking Russian, or that in a film set in Spain, they're all speaking Spanish. That's why accents aren't really necessary.Very good movie, fast-moving and suspenseful.

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.

Another of those countless propaganda movies which intended to depict France during the Occupation.This movie bears the appropriate scars of the time.Annabella ,who was Tyrone Power's wife at the time and who lost her brother in WW2,was anxious to make something for her country.Not only she starred in this half-decent flick,but she also played on stage for the soldiers afterward.An English soldier comes to occupied France:he's got to facilitate the raid (check the title).An arms factory must be destroyed.He winds up in a family : the daughter hates the English who killed her brother ,the father is a resistant fighter and the mother never got over her son's loss and is a bit lunatic .So our hero could easily pass for the late boy ,who would be just back from war.No sooner said than done.Everybody speaks English ,the English spy (of course) ,the French and the Germans.John Sutton and Dalio exchanges two sentences in French,the former mumbles a "Auf Wiedersehn" and that's it.Annabella shouts "Vive la France" towards the end and the women working in the field sing the martial anthem "Le Chant Du Départ" " .The soundtrack uses "Auprès de Ma Blonde" and "La Marseillaise " over and over again,after an appropriate "Rule Britannia" for the beginning.