A truly remarkable film for its' time when WW2 was still yesterday's news and its' grim realities were still universally accepted. You wonder if today's audiences would be prepared to accept the extreme subterfuge, moral ambiguities and agonising judgement calls such a conflict would demand? Should they simply arrest the Nazi agent or use him to feed false information to the Germans about the liberation of Europe even if this means endangering the other agents working alongside him? Should the French resistance fighters trust Cagney's character in his claim to be an Allied agent or simply execute him as a quisling? How far should they go in collaborating with the Germans to maintain their cover against helping the Allies? To judge by some of the controversy surrounding the 'War on Terror' I would venture no?James Cagney is excellent here, probably happy to ditch his gangster persona and be able to demonstrate his martial arts prowess as a judo black belt during the training sequences. Of the supporting cast the Nazi agent is very good, really convincing you by his ingenuity in the theft exercise sequence, maybe they should have left his real identity a mystery until later in the film? The clean cut all American boy by contrast is unceremoniously killed off-screen, plummeting to his death due to a sabotaged parachute line, in a lesser film he would have been the hero but the cynical message here is that his sort of naivety is fatal as is the romantic attachment of the French agent to her missing husband (you really suspected her of being the Nazi spy, blackmailed by threats to him into working for them).The training sequences at the OSS are very realistic and whilst they may seem clichéd now you must remember they must have been a revelation to the audiences of 1947 (as the intro explains the OSS was a revolutionary departure for the US intelligence services, achingly liberal America hugely reluctant to create the same sort of spy agency as other countries, it taking Pearl Harbour to jar the wider population from their complacency and understand the necessity).Very ruthless for its' time, Cagney gives a big speech about how the Queensberry rules are out the window and that this is a fight to the finish. When he is later captured (his enemy prying the suicide pill from his hand) his erstwhile pupil reminds him of that speech as he is tortured. Cagney practices what he preaches, even killing men with his bare hands and later ends up being killed by his own side just to shut him up. EVERYONE dies, even the heroine which must have been very rare at the time.So all told a realistic and impressively accurate representation of what the OSS got up to during WW2.

Good WWII espionage tale has secret agent James Cagney training a group of recruits. One of them turns out to be a German double agent. Instead of arresting the spy, Cagney feeds them false information. But this doesn't turn out as planned and Cagney has to go after the agent himself.Solid cast backing up Cagney, who's great as usual. Richard Conte, Walter Abel, Melville Cooper, and Sam Jaffe are all quality actors. Lovely French actress Annabella is quite good, too. Karl Malden, Red Buttons, and E.G. Marshall all have uncredited bit parts. I enjoyed the scenes of the agents receiving their training, which was varied to say the least. I'm a sucker for minutiae, I guess. My favorite part of this was when the agents had to listen to a sound and pick what it was between two choices. For example, "a jungle bird or a falling bomb." I'm not quite sure what practical purpose this sort of training has but it sure was amusing to watch. The government agency in the movie is called O77 but it's really supposed to be the OSS (Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor to the CIA). Apparently the head of the OSS objected to the part of the movie that had an enemy agent infiltrating his organization, so the studio changed the name to O77.

There's a trivia question in here somewhere, what links James Cagney to Sean Connery: Cagney's 'agent' number was 077 while Connery's, of course, was 007. Fox began their 'semi-documentary' series in 1945 with The House on 92nd Street and 13, Rue Madeleine continues the tradition, beginning with a 'newsreel' timbred voice-over dedication-cum-scene setter and proceeding documentary-style with recruitment, training, and assignments for 0SS personnel that segues into a specific mission co- led by Cagney and Walter Abel. Early on Abel tells Cagney that amongst the trainees is a Nazi agent and leaves Cagney to ferret him/her out. Richard Conte pretty much semaphores that it is him but we have to accept his flawless American accent with no explanation of how long he has lived in America or if he is, in fact, a genuine American who has been recruited by the Germans. Perhaps at the time, 1947, audiences would have let this go by but in 2013 it feels sloppy. The blurb on DVD box doesn't help when it states that Rue Madeleine is in Paris when in fact it is in Le Havre, a port in Northern France. For a film with minimal 'action' it remains surprisingly effective and in its favor it resists a happy ending. Worth a look.

James Cagney stars in "13 Rue Madeleine," a routine WW II spy drama also starring Richard Conte, Annabella, and a several familiar faces in smaller roles: Sam Jaffe, Karl Malden, and E.G. Marshall. Done in semidocumentary style, Cagney plays the head of a U.S. spy cell, but the cell is known to have a Nazi in its midst. He is not eliminated so that he can be fed the wrong date for D-Day. When he kills one of the other spies, Cagney has to go in as a replacement.Despite some nice performances, notably from Cagney and Conte, the film under Henry Hathaway's direction was quite slow; he was lumbered with a script where it was difficult to develop any feelings for most of the characters, as they were underdeveloped. There were some good scenes, particularly the ones with Jaffe's character and the French resistance. Darryl F. Zanuck brought the pretty, petite Annabella over from France to star her in films, unaware that she would fall in love with his top male star, Tyrone Power. When he tried to discourage the relationship by sending her back to France to do some films, she refused to leave her man, thus finishing her as far as Zanuck was concerned. It's a shame because although you can't tell in this movie, Annabella was an excellent actress, as she would prove on the stage. It's fun to see Karl Malden and E.G. Marshall in small parts.The end of the film is powerful, but I prefer "OSS," also a small, semidocumentary film - catch that one if you have a chance.