IslandGuru Who payed the critics

Merolliv I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Asad Almond A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Delight Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

bkoganbing 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.

mark.waltz Excellent photography is the star of this World War II propaganda actioneer where an English flier, posing as a Frenchman, plots to alert the allies to the location of a German factory in the French countryside with the help of the locales, willing to loose their farms in order to end the Nazi occupation. John Sutton, taking over on the "B" front for 20th Century Fox's usual "A" lead Tyrone Power, is excellent as he convinces the locales to help him, finding instant animosity with the pretty Annabella, afraid of Nazi retaliation against her family. Lee J. Cobb and Beaulah Bondi are her courageous parents, with Blanche Yurka playing a more noble version of her "A Tale of Two Cities" character Madame DeFarge and Ann Codee (a softer version of Yurka who sounds almost like her) playing other locales. Short and sweet at just over an hour, this has some excellent action sequences, brisk editing and lots of rousing flag-waving, even if it is typical of many films of this period. Some of the Nazi cruelty is genuinely shocking, with Howard da Silva standing out as a German officer who has his eye on Annabella.

Irving Warner 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.

dbdumonteil 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.