Nearly four years of war and the destruction wrought by Hitler's Luftwaffe had not only changed the landscape of the city, it had caused an influx of French refugees. Among them were political figures like General Charles de Gaulle (who had recently become the head of the French Committee of National Liberation - in effect the Free French government in exile in England) and actors like Claude Dauphin and a Parisian troupe called The Moliere Players .
While the British government, led by Winston Churchill, was often at odds with de Gaulle, it recognized the need for propaganda films to boost morale in France, then on the eve of liberation by Allied forces. The underground French Resistance movement had been very effective in sabotaging German occupational forces but as a result had suffered bloody reprisals.
To direct this tribute to the Resistance, the British Ministry of Information chose England's most celebrated film-maker, Alfred Hitchcock, who had been criticized in August of 1940 when his former producer Michael Balcon made scathing remarks about "plump" British directors who left for Hollywood "while we who are left behind short-handed are trying to harness the films to our great national effort." Although Hitchcock released a statement to the press that he was ready to help with the war effort and that "the British government has only to call upon me for my services", he was in no hurry to return to England.
Hitchcock was riding high on a wave of popularity. His American debut film Rebecca (1940) had been a box-office hit, followed up in only three years by Foreign Correspondent (1940), Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941), Suspicion (1941), Saboteur (1942), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), and the film he had just completed before leaving for England, Lifeboat (1944). He was under contract to top Hollywood producer David O. Selznick and with it came the luxury of big salaries, big budgets, and big stars - something he never had while working in England.
Still, Balcon's criticism must have hurt. It was Balcon, after all, who had given Hitchcock his first break as an assistant director on the 1923 film Woman to Woman and later produced many of Hitchcock's British films in the thirties. Years later, Hitchcock would tell Francois Truffaut, "I felt the need to make a little contribution to the war effort, and I was both overweight and overage for military service. I knew that if I did nothing I'd regret it for the rest of my life; it was important to me to do something and also to get right into the atmosphere of war. Before that, I had discussed my next feature for Selznick; it was to be based on an English novel called The House of Dr. Edwardes. Then I took off, but it wasn't easy to get to England in those days. I flew over in a bomber, sitting on the floor, and when we got halfway across the Atlantic, the plane had to turn back. I took another one two days later. In London, my friend Sidney Bernstein was the head of the film section of the British Ministry of Information. It was at his request that I undertook two small films that were tributes to the work of the French Resistance." Making propaganda films wasn't the only idea Hitchcock had in mind; he and Bernstein (who was the owner of the Granada theater chain in England) had discussed forming a production company to make films in London and California when the war was over; something David Selznick suspected when he cabled his representative in England, "I hope that one of the motives behind bringing Mr. Hitchcock back to England is not a desire to negotiate a private deal with [Bernstein] in the future". Hitchcock and Bernstein later formed Trans-Atlantic Pictures, the company that produced Rope (1948) and Under Capricorn (1949).
Following his arrival in London, Hitchcock linked up with writer Angus MacPhail (who would later work with Hitchcock on Spellbound (1945) and The Wrong Man, 1956), director-turned screenwriter, J.O.C. Orton and French actor Claude Dauphin to adapt a story idea by Arthur Calder-Marshall, which would become Bon Voyage (1944). Hitchcock later described it as "a little story about an RAF man who is being escorted out of France through the Resistance channels. His escort was a Polish officer. When he arrives in London, the RAF man is interrogated by an officer of the Free French Forces, who informs him that his Polish escort was really a Gestapo man. Upon that startling revelation, we go through the journey across France all over again, but this time we show all sorts of details that the young RAF man hadn't noticed at first, various indications of the Pole's complicity with the Gestapo detail. At the end of the story there was a twist showing how the Polish officer had been trapped. At the same time, the RAF man learned that the young French girl who'd helped them, and had spotted the Pole as a spy, had been killed by him."
Now living at Claridges' Hotel, Hitchcock spent his days working with his writers MacPhail, Orton, and Dauphin, who contributed dialogue as the film was to be shot in French. For technical advisors, he had "a whole group of French officers, including a certain Commander or Colonel Forestier who never agreed to anything the others suggested. We realized that the Free French were very divided against one another, and these inner conflicts became the subject of the next film, Aventure Malgache [1944]." Somehow, Hitchcock still found the time to entertain fellow Claridges' guests, producer Alexander Korda and actress Vivien Leigh, visit family and friends, and reconcile with Michael Balcon.
His script now complete, Hitchcock cast 23 year-old John Blythe as the Scottish RAF officer with the rest of the parts taken by The Moliere Players, who had fled France after the German invasion. Because most, if not all of The Moliere Players still had family living in occupied France, their names were never listed on the cast list for fear that their families would suffer reprisals from the Germans. Filming took place at the Associated British Studios at Welwyn Garden City between January 20th and February 25th, 1944. Alfred Hitchcock, who commanded a large salary in Hollywood, was paid £ 10 a week by the British Government.
Bon Voyage turned out to be more an Alfred Hitchcock film than an official propaganda piece. The Hitchcockian elements are there - the innocent man unwittingly caught up in events beyond his control, double-agents, and plenty of suspense. What isn't there (besides the famous Hitchcock cameo appearance) is the morale-boosting propaganda the British government wanted. Propaganda requires that the facts be presented clearly. Morale-boosting requires an upbeat ending with the hero victorious. Instead, Bon Voyage portrays the Scottish RAF officer as being rather naive. He's fooled by the Gestapo and this failure to recognize the enemy leads to the deaths of the French Resistance members who saved his life. This devastating news isn't delivered until the second half of the film, when the truth is revealed in flashbacks to earlier scenes.
Historians differ as to whether or not Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache were ever shown in France and England. What is certain is that the films were quickly shelved by the British Government for being "inflammatory" and were not seen again until the early 1990's when they were restored by the British Film Institute. Effective propaganda or not, Bon Voyage is an exciting short film and remains a rare treat for Hitchcock fans.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Screenplay: Angus MacPhail, J.O.C. Orton
Cinematography: Gunther Krampf
Production Design: J. Charles Gilbert
Music: Benjamin Frankel
Cast: John Blythe (John Dougall).
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by Lorraine LoBianco
