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Odette (1950)

In response to a radio broadcast request for photographs of France, mother of three Odette Sansom sends a letter to the Admiralty, but an addressing mistake brings her to the attention of the Special Operations Executive, who need French people to go back to their homeland as espionage agents. She completes her training in September 1942 and is sent to France.

She travels to Cannes, where she is met by Captain Peter Churchill, her superior. She also meets "Arnauld" (Adolphe Rabinovitch), another agent. Her first assignment is to go to Marseilles to pick up plans for the docks there.

Barely warned in time of a raid organized by Abwehr Colonel Henri (Hugo Bleicher) in Cannes, Odette, Peter and Arnauld are forced to relocate to Annecy, where they rendezvous with Jacques. Learning of the Maquis, Peter requests arms, medicines, etc. for them. He is then recalled to London. A large airdrop of supplies is arranged.

Later, however, Henri finds Odette in Annecy. From a captured agent, he has learned all about Odette's network and claims that he and others, disaffected with Hitler, wish to make contact with the British. However, she suspects otherwise and orders the other agents to disperse. Shortly after Peter returns to France, she and Peter are captured in Annecy by Henri and eventually taken to Fresnes Prison, near Paris; Arnauld was away when the hotel where they were staying was raided.

Odette is tortured by the Gestapo, but does not break and is sentenced to death. An apologetic Henri visits her; at her request, he arranges for her to see Peter one last time, though she hides her fate from him. She is then taken to Ravensbrück concentration camp on 26 July 1944 and immediately placed in solitary confinement. The Germans believe Odette's lies about Peter, that he is related to Winston Churchill and that she was the brains of the network, while he was a playboy dilettante, and he is merely imprisoned.

With Germany invaded and collapsing, on 16 April 1945, the camp commandant is ordered to execute his prisoners, but he orders a subordinate to see to Odette's safety. When the inmates learn that Hitler is dead, they riot. A guard comes for Odette; she believes she is to be executed, but the commandant instead takes her to the advancing Americans, believing another of her lies, that she is Peter's wife and therefore related to the British Prime Minister. Back in England, she is reunited with Peter.

The end of the film contains a title card saying as follows:

"It is with a sense of deep humility that I allow my personal story to be told. I am a very ordinary woman to whom a chance was given to see human beings at their best and at their worst. I knew kindness as well as cruelty, understanding as well as brutality. My comrades, who did far more than I and suffered far more profoundly, are not here to speak. It is to their memory that this film has been made and I would like it to be a window through which may be seen those very gallant women with whom I had the honour to serve."
Odette Churchill