Hitchcock at war: Aventure malgache. Bon voyage

Having just completed work on ‘Lifeboat’ in Hollywood, Hitchcock returned to the UK keen to contribute to the war effort. He made these two short films for the Ministry of Information, for use solely as propaganda tools for the French Resistance. ‘Bon Voyage’: might almost fit in as an episode for Hitchcock’s later TV series. A Scottish air gunner who has escaped from a POW camp in Germany and made it safely back to Britain, is being questioned by a Free French intelligence officer. As he explains how he was helped and guided by a Polish fellow-escapee, we watch (in flashback) the perilous last stages of his journey through France, passed from hand to hand by ambivalent strangers through a series of sinister rendez-vous that - he hopes - adds up to an underground Resistance network. ‘Aventure malgache’: Paris’ Moliere Players enact a thrilling tale of the French Resistance. The fact-based story concerns Claurousse, who boldly operated on behalf of the Underground in Nazi-occupied Madagascar. Sent to prison by the Vichy government, Claurousse is rescued by the British, and is thus able to continue tweaking Hitler’s nose. As in his previous ‘Murder’ and his later ‘Stage Fright’, Hitchcock seems delighted with the opportunity to combine the specialized world of the theater with the more treacherous terrain of intrigue. The film was made, as Hitchcock later told Francois Truffaut, to expound the inner conflicts which divided the Free French, and which had become apparent during script conferences. The most interesting aspect of ‘Aventure Malgache’ lies now in its typically Hitchcockian element of masquerade. In French with English subtitles.