Odette | |
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Directed by | Herbert Wilcox |
Screenplay by | Warren Chetham-Strode |
Based on | Odette: The Story of a British Agent by Jerrard Tickell |
Produced by | Herbert Wilcox Anna Neagle |
Starring | Anna Neagle Trevor Howard Marius Goring Bernard Lee Peter Ustinov |
Cinematography | Mutz Greenbaum (credited as Max Greene) |
Edited by | Bill Lewthwaite |
Music by | Anthony Collins |
Production company | Wilcox-Neagle Productions |
Distributed by | British Lion Films |
Release dates |
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Running time | 124 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Box office | £269,463 (UK)[1] 2,251,983 admissions (France)[2] |
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.[3]