Odette 1950
Director: Herbert Wilcox
Writers: Jerrard Tickell, Warren Chetham Strode
Rôle: Colonel Henri
Release Date: 6 June 1950
Synopsis: This is the story of a brave woman who volunteered to join S.O.E. (Special Operations Executive) during World War II. She was flown into occupied France where she fought with the French resistance. Captured and tortured by the Gestapo, she refused to identify her accomplices.
Comment: 'Odette' was given a Royal Command Film Performance for its premiere on 7 June 1950 attended by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. There is film on YouTube of Marius meeting the King and Queen.
Reviews: From frenchfilms.org: "The performances are extraordinarily convincing, with both Neagle and her co-star Trevor Howard effectively playing down the heroism of their characters to reveal their nobler qualities - loyalty, tenacity and, of course, courage - whilst never letting us forget their ordinariness. Marius Goring (best known for his Powell-Pressburger outings, A Matter of Life and Death (1946) and The Red Shoes (1948)) is superbly sinister as a shady German intelligence operative. Goring delivers a wonderfully ambiguous characterisation - we cannot be sure whether his Colonel Henri is as ambivalent to the Nazi cause as he pretends or whether he is just a master of deceit."
Trivia: The short sleeve shirt that Marius is wearing and the scarf that is draped over the railing in the scene where he is leaning on the balcony railing (see first picture in the gallery below) are the same as those he wore in The Red Shoes (1948). He would also wear the same scarf in The Man Who Watched Trains Go By (1952). The overcoat he wears in a scene in Annecy he would later wear in The Treasure of San Teresa (1959) and in Maigret (1963) as Peter the Lett.
Availability: DVD (Studio Canal) Release date: 2009 & Blu Ray (Studio Canal) Release Date: 20 June 2019.
