Assignment in Brittany

Another of the movies that I needed to watch before it expired from my cloud DVR is an MGM World War II morale-builder, Assignment in Brittany.

The movie doesn't start in Brittany, but in North Africa, where the allies are fighting the Germans. Captain Metard (Jean-Pierre Aumont) is a spy doing espionage work, dressed as one of the local Arabs. However, it's a ruse to murder a Nazi officer, and one that works. Metard, being French, can't go back to France since the Nazis occupy it, so he returns to the London headquarters of the Free French. But they have a plan for him that's going to allow him to go back to France, as if you couldn't tell from the title of the movie.

Bertrand Corlay is a farmer and poet from Brittany, but he was believed to have been collaborating with the Nazis since they occupied France. The British got him, and found out that he and Metard look surprisingly alike. So perhaps the British and Free French can train Metard in what Corlay is like, so that he can go back to Brittany as Corlay and move around the area the way that Corlay could to get vital information that the Allies want. Now, to me, it seems silly that somebody like Metard could learn to become Corlay in the short time period that the movie requires, but in those days apparently it wasn't considered so far-fetched.

Now, you might guess from my comment that Metard is caught out fairly quickly, but that's not the case. Only Mme. Corlay (Margaret Wycherley) figures out the deception right away. She's opposed to the Nazis even though here real son isn't, so she's not about to betray this interloper. The bigger issue is that Bertrand had a fairly complicated personal life. He's got a fiancée, Anne (Susan Peters), but also has a mistress in Élise (Signe Hasso). And everybody around knows that Bertrand Corlay is liked enough by the Nazis to be able to go to Paris (which is how the British are able to make the switch).

However, since this is a World War II movie and the Nazid obviously can't win in the end, we can assume that Metard is able to get information, which is that the Nazis have taken a seaside village, Saint Lumaire, and turned it into a port for their U-boats, forcibly evacuating all of the locals. Metard has to get the information back to the Allies, and that's going to require a radio broadcast. If you've seen enough World War II movies you know that the Nazis and Allies were going around searching for the location of illicit transmitters. This results in Metard getting captured, and the movie reaching its climax.

Assignment in Brittany is typical for the sort of movie released during World War II and dealing with resistance to the Nazis. It's well enough done, although it was designed to be jingoistic in order to keep up the spirits of the people on the home front. Audiences of the day probably would have enjoyed it, although watching 80 years on it might appear dated to some.