The Observer (30/Nov/2008) - Alfred Hitchcock's Wartime Resistance Films

(c) The Observer (30/Nov/2008)

Alfred Hitchcock's Wartime Resistance Films

In 1944, Hitchcock returned from Hollywood to direct these two fascinating half-hour films for the Ministry of Information in London. The plan was to show them as morale boosters in liberated France and they were made with the Molière Players, a group of French refugee actors. Only Hitchcock is credited, though German expressionist photographer Günther Krampf shot both. Both look more like Hitchcock's prewar movies than his Hollywood ones and are formally rather clever. In Bon Voyage an RAF sergeant (played by British actor John Blythe) is debriefed in London by a Gaullist officer about the assistance given by French Resistance to get him home after being shot down. Aventure Malgache centres on a confrontation between a lawyer heading the Resistance and a police chief working for Vichy. Bon Voyage was screened in Paris in late 1944. Aventure Malgache was considered far too controversial and was never shown.