Odette (1950)

Directed by

Herbert Wilcox

Genre

spy film

Country

United Kingdom

Runtime

2h 04m

Rated

NR

Rating

6.4 of 10 from 27 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A British housewife is recruited as a spy for the Special Operations Executive during World War Two. She is captured by the Germans, sentenced to death, and sent to a concentration camp. Despite the extreme danger she endures, she survives the war and later testifies against her captors.

tensedramaticsomberinspiringhistoricalgroundedrestrainedharrowing

What happens

Odette is a 1950 British war film based on the true story of Special Operations Executive French agent, Odette Sansom, living in England, who was captured by the Germans in 1943, condemned to death and sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp to be executed. However, against all odds she survived the war and testified against the prison guards at the Hamburg Ravensbrück trials. She was awarded the George Cross in 1946; the first woman ever to receive the award, and the only woman who has been awarded it while still alive. Anna Neagle plays Odette Sansom and Trevor Howard plays Peter Churchill, the British agent she mainly worked with and married after the war. Peter Ustinov plays their Jewish radio operator Alex Rabinovitch, Cr de Guerre, OBE, MiD. Colonel Maurice Buckmaster, who was head of the SOE's French Section, played himself in the film, as did Paddy Sproule, another FANY female SOE agent. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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