There were such hopes invested in this film, Lindsay Anderson wrote a book about its production, but it has never really recovered from its commercial and seemingly artistic failure. In truth, for a film that aspires to be an intelligent study of anarchists beliefs, it suffers from a timidity that some may find all too typical of the British films of its period, and from punches pulled in a manner that rather typifies the work of that almost brilliant director, Thorold Dickinson. But it is an intelligent study for all that, gripping and persuasive until one too many plot convolutions spoils it. I have never failed to be moved when seeing it, nor to be frustrated that it wasn't just a little bit better. The story revolves around European refugees in London who get caught up in the activities of anarchists. Valentina Cortese gives a haunting performance as the conscience-stricken refugee caught up in an assassination plot, and a young Audrey Hepburn is her ballet-dancing innocent sister whose life she must save.
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kinekrom23 April 2005
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blanche-224 August 2014Simply put "Secret People" is about terrorism.
Maria Brentano (Valentina Cortese) and her younger sister Nora (Angela Fouldes/Audrey Hepburn) are sent to live in London with a friend of their father's; he is ultimately killed by a European dictator, Galbern. Maria becomes a citizen and changes her name to Brent and works in her guardian's restaurant, while Nora pursues a career as a dancer. Seven years pass, and their guardian takes them for a weekend in Paris. There, Maria sees her boyfriend Louis (Serge Reggiani), from whom she has been separated for seven years.
Serge and his group are now plotting the assassination of Galbern, who is visiting London. He arranges for Nora to be hired for a private party which will be attended by Galbern, and Maria will be a guest. He pressures her at the last minute to carry a bomb and pass it to someone who will be at the party. The plan goes awry and a waitress is killed. Horrified, Maria goes into a sort of witness protection and is sent back to help capture Louis and his group.
Terrorism coming into and hurting ordinary people, fanatics who believe in their cause -- it resonates today. The acting is very good. Valentina Cortese is excellent as a loving and protective woman drawn into something by the man she loves. Audrey Hepburn is sweet and very girlish as Nora, and Serge Reggiani as the smooth Louis does a great job. This role must have hit close to home for Reggiani; his father was a prominent anti-fascist and fled Mussolini in order to protect his family. Everyone in the film is good.
Valentina Cortese was interviewed for the Audrey Hepburn biography on which I worked. She adored Hepburn, and the two of them used to go to nightclubs together and even at one point tried smoking cigars. So it was especially interesting for me to see this film. Despite some negative reviews here, I found this a worthwhile film. -
bkoganbing20 June 2017Maybe the most important thing about Secret People is the fact that William Wyler took a look at this film and decided that his next film Roman Holiday would star an unknown Audrey Hepburn. Hepburn plays a supporting role as the younger sister of Valentina Cortesa. Both are refugees from some unknown eastern European country where the two of them had their father killed by the local dictator.
Audrey was still a kid when she and Valentina came over, but now she's grown up and an aspiring dancer. As for Cortesa she's content enough until Serge Reggiani shows from the old country. He's with the opposition to the dictator and they want to kill him in London while he's on a state visit. So far it sounds like the plot of Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much.
But this film is told from the point of view of the conspirators and how slowly Cortesa is drawn into their web of intrigue despite a lot of misgivings. Every agonizing thought so registers with Cortesa and her performance even after Hepburn who has adjusted well to Great Britain and wants to pursue a career in dance.
As for Reggiani the years have turned him into quite the fanatic. Today he would be called a terrorist.
Secret People is done a bit unevenly in pace, there are spots it drags. But Cortesa and Reggiani carry it through and it's a milestone of sorts for Audrey Hepburn. -
Valentina Cortese, daughter of pacifist anti-fascist, makes the best of exile in England with sister Audrey Hepburn. When the strongman who killed her father comes to England, will she resist the entreaties of her father's political friends to help them, or will she join THE SECRET PEOPLE? This is quite a good film -- but it is much more a character study of a woman who suddenly finds her ideals and her peace of mind threatened because of her position - then it is a straightforward spy vs spy drama. Audrey Hepburn, on the cusp of stardom, is given a role that highlights her talents without taxing her abilities. (She plays young and dangerously innocent beautifully. Her ability to do this is what makes the end of the film work.) But the movie rests on the ability of Valentina Cortese to seem intelligent but scared, vulnerable and terribly conflicted. This is a really good role that gets a really good performance.
Is this a classic for the ages? Not quite -- I like the characterization of one of the commenters as "near masterpiece". There's a deliberate lack of suspense in the film -- the results of one of the key actions in the film is so telegraphed in advance that the sequence surrounding it might be the dullest patch of the film, and the build up to the final climax is oddly lacking. But, if you have a dog- eared copy of Conrad's Secret Agent, you'll recognize the dark but dowdy milieu, and appreciate that Ealing's dedication to the use of location filming is put to good -- if very un-Ealing like -- use here.
Worth the time. -
boudica1011 August 2009The Secret People is worth seeing as much for what it did not accomplish as for what it did. It seems to me that only Hitchcock's Sabotage deals with the same sort of moral dilemmas that this film attempts to portray. Both Sabotage and Secret People were filmed in dark London streets and ominous back streets. In fact, the cinematography is literally so dark that it is often difficult to make out the action. In both films, an atmosphere of dread and secrecy hangs over the characters. However, despite the strong bond between the sisters, you never feel the same anguish shown in Sabotage by the wife of the saboteur. The film could have been a lot more forceful in setting up its moral conflicts. Of course, it is worth while just to see the young Audrey Hepburn dance classical ballet, something we were never to see again on film. And to see her before she became a major star. No Givenchy fashions in this one!
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AlsExGal23 January 2023British thriller from Ealing Studios and director Thorold Dickinson. In 1930, Maria (Valentina Cortese) and her little sister Nora (Audrey Hepburn) are sent to London from Italy to protect them from the rising militarism there. By 1937, the two women have acclimated to their new lives, although Maria is becoming restless in her cafe job. When she runs into Louis (Serge Reggiani), a young man that she knew back in Italy, Maria quickly becomes enamored with him, and fails to see that he is using her for a sinister purpose. Also featuring Charles Goldner, Angela Fouldes, Megs Jenkins, Irene Worth, Reginald Tate, Norman Williams, Michael Ripper, and Athene Seyler.
This murky espionage thriller is short on thrills but not completely without merit. Cortese isn't bad as a woman in over her head. Hepburn, as an aspiring ballet dancer, has her biggest pre-Roman Holiday role. She's cute, but her role isn't fleshed out enough for her to make any sort of acting impression. -
Secret People (1951)
A British production, and very much about their view on the coming of World War II. It's gritty, interwoven with several main characters, and fairly dark.
The film is a kind of revisiting of the build up to the war from one small personal point of view, filled with intrigue and international mixing. There are migrants and immigrants and a growing threat of an unnamed evil (though swastikas do appear in some inserted footage). It's complicated and exciting. Some key scenes happen early on in the 1937 Paris Exposition. It whispers and then it shouts. Most of the action is in mysterious London.
The key actor, in my view, is Serge Reggiani, who is Louis, the evil foreigner up to disrupt the uneasy peace still alive in London. He has a subtle touch to his sinister intentions, and it lifts the movie up. The actual main character is also excellent, the tortured and trapped Maria played by another Italian actor, Valentina Cortese.
It might be easy to look back at these times from more than a decade later. But it isn't easy to make it fresh, and to keep the tension make sense. Of course, now it is 60 years later and it becomes more of a drama with historical roots that have to be told by the movie, not assumed. At times the movie pulls this off with surprising sharpness. As the police get involved, it gets curiously complicated, good guys vs. bad guys, with no one quite fitting the clichés of other movies. The idea here is that the enemy is unexpected, and everywhere.
It should be mentioned that we have Audrey Hepburn, whose first movie appearance was just one year earlier. She's not quite the Audrey we all know, but almost. Briefly. Great to see.
The more I watched this movie the more I liked it. It might be an underrated gem in some ways. There is so much going on and really dramatic filming with often nearly pitch black scenes, inside or out.
A final note. A chap at one point says, surprised, "A London girl made good coffee." How times have changed. -
JamesHitchcock8 December 2015"Secret People" is largely remembered for providing Audrey Hepburn with what has been described as "her first significant film role", although in fact her character Nora does not play a major part in the plot until the very end of the film. (The film is much more about her older sister Maria). Audrey seems to have been cast mainly on the basis of her dancing skills (she had trained at ballet school) because Nora is an aspiring ballerina and several dance sequences, with little connection to the main storyline, are featured. Her acting skills, however, must have impressed the director Thorold Dickinson because it was on the basis of a screen test he made with Audrey that she won the leading role in "Roman Holiday", her big Hollywood breakthrough.
Nora and Maria arrive in London as political refugees after a dictator seizes power in their unnamed European homeland. Seven years later, Maria is reunited with her lover Louis who she learns is a member of a revolutionary organisation plotting to overthrow the country's government. Louis recruits Maria into the group and persuades her, much against her will, to take part in a plan to assassinate the dictator when he visits London. This places Maria in a dilemma. She has every reason to hate the regime, which was responsible for the death of her father, but also recalls that her father was a pacifist who would have disapproved of violence in any circumstances. Maria's dilemma becomes all the greater when the assassination plot goes wrong and the dictator survives but an innocent woman is killed instead. (The title "Secret People", incidentally, does not derive from any association with "secret agents" but from the idea that we all have a "secret person" hidden inside us, a "person" which becomes visible when we are under stress).
The film's political stance is a potentially interesting one. Although it was made only a few years after the end of World War II, the treatment of Louis and his group is by no means as positive as one might expect. They are not shown as the moral equivalent of the European Resistance movements during the war itself, who were nearly always portrayed in a positive, even heroic, light. Dickinson seems to have wanted to imply that revolutionary movements can take on, if only subconsciously, something of the moral character of the governments they oppose, because Louis and his followers are fanatical, authoritarian and callous of human life, whether that be the life of innocent bystanders caught up in their schemes or the life of their own members whose loyalty is considered suspect. Any crime can be justified provided it furthers their cause. The film quotes W H Auden's well-known line that "We must love one another or die", but the attitude of Louis and his associates can be summed up in another Auden line- "The acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder".
This is a potentially interesting theme, but it is not dealt with in a very interesting way. The character of Louis needed to be more developed in order to show how the once-idealistic young man whom Maria remembers has become a violent political fanatic and we could have learned more about the other members of the revolutionary cell. Instead, all the emphasis is on Maria, and matters are not helped by the fact that Valentina Cortese, here billed as "Cortesa", gives a rather dull performance, making Maria seem too cautious and indecisive ever to be plausible as an active accomplice to a political murder. When "Secret People" came out in 1952, the film critic of "The Times" described it as "a confused, inarticulate, disappointing film, neither as imaginative nor as intellectually exciting as it should be," and there is justice in that criticism. It is little-known today- I recently caught a rare television screening- and unlikely to appeal to many people except to Audrey Hepburn completists. 5/10
A goof. The line "We must love one another or die" is quoted in the context of a scene set in 1930, but in fact it is taken from Auden's poem "September 1st 1939" which as its title might suggest was not written until 1939. -
howardmorley19 April 2015To answer an earlier user comment, the reason Audrey Hepburn did not continue with classical ballet was because of a serious injury to one of her ankles - always a risk for dancers.Nevertheless Audrey dancing in her tutu was a highlight of this 1952 Ealing film.
"London Live" commercial channel in the UK have just begun showing a season of classic Ealing films, so you could see Ealing did not just produce film comedies.I am grateful to my wife for pointing me in the right direction so I could see this film, which is not advertised for sale on rare DVD movie sites to my knowledge.The cognoscenti of classic British films from this era will also spot Megs Jenkins, Sam Kydd and Sidney Tafler in other small parts.The above user comments sufficiently describe the plot so I will not dwell further on it.
Suffice it to say the theme of terrorism is still very much relevant today with 7/7/2005 much remembered in the UK.My wife and I enjoyed it to the end and I awarded it 7/10.A good evening's viewing with the "Poldark" remake on BBC to follow! -
searchanddestroy-12 May 2023This scheme could be seen as a modern topic, concerning terrorism and the elements that may push some people to get involved in this way. See for yourself, this young woman who seeks revenge against the death of her father because of a dictator, but who suddenly realizes that the revenge is maybe not the best soluton, because this very vengeance will itelf bring death, pain for innocent people. You can feel some ambivalent things about this story, you may find it naive, too much didactic. I think it is very difficult to analyze but it remains interesting to watch, and the photography is purely awesome. Thorold Dickinson was a very good British director in the forties and early fifties, remember his version of GASLIGHT.
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Frightened, vulnerable refugees, escaping the political tensions permeating Europe in 1930 (and, we are to assume, the escalating prominence of the Nazi party), come to stay with friends in London; seven years later, having received their British citizenship, the younger sister embarks on a dancing career while the older sister reconnects with her handsome fiancé, now a newspaperman and leader in the political underground. Well-meaning, but drab melodramatics from Britain's Ealing Studios. Late plot-twist involving plastic surgery seems to belong to a different film altogether. Audrey Hepburn, two years before her breakthrough in Hollywood, received her most substantial acting role up to this time playing the dancing darling; she's charming and poised, but the part doesn't offer much beyond showcasing her youthful eagerness. *1/2 from ****
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kenmyersproject1 February 2008It was said that the director Thorold Dickenson and his colleagues viewed Hitchcock's "Sabotage" before starting this film, and I'm not really sure if they learned anything. I do agree with both of the first reviewers for this in that it did have some promise, but it fell short. Perhaps because of the long delay before actual production of the project got under way when Ealing Studios saw it as an unusual product worth tackling.
Valentina Cortesa did a marvelous job as a foreign refugee living in London who gets caught up in the intrigue unwillingly.This film was one of the only ones that I hadn't seen of Audrey Hepburn's earlier works. Although she only appears in it off and on she is given a broader speaking role than her previous earlier film 'walk-on' parts. She was quite able to act with the best of what this British Film Company had to offer, in a role a bit too understated for me. In fact, the whole film was a little too 'understated', dealing with a bomb plot planned by nationals of a foreign tyranny in 1930's London.
I would watch this again, as it is now part of my library of hard to find films. I gave it an eight out of ten stars for Cortesa's performance and the early glimpse of Hepburn beyond a one minute spot.One does walk away from this film wishing it was better given it's premise, which is still very much a topic of today as it was then.If you can find a copy I would recommend it. -
ksf-212 August 2009Another Ealing Studios/Rank production from 1952... opens with a title card describing an "inner person" within each of us...foreshadowing of some sort. We are told that it takes place in 1930 London, just prior to England and WW II. A man reads a letter from an old friend, warning of troubles to come, and asking him to look after his children... Really, the only big name (that I recognize) is Audrey Hepburn, as "Nora", one of the daughters. The next two films she would make were Roman Holiday and Sabrina, and her voice sounds more like a little girl in this one, as she was still only about 21. Co-star Serge Reggiani, who apparently was a famous artist, singer, actor, poet, even boxer in Europe, plays "Louis". We follow along as Nora and her sister "Maria" (Valentina Cortese) make good and bad decisions. Lots of underground war-time spying and espionage.... the photography and sound are quite good for the 1950s. The film has a good script, but lacks a spark and some big names. A good entertaining film, if no real "electricity. Written and directed by Thorold Dickinson, this would be one of the last films he made. This film is not at all connected to the "Secret People" documentary made in 1998.
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CinemaSerf13 February 2023Talk about things coming full circle? Maria (Valentina Cortese) and her sister "Nora" (Audrey Hepburn) are in Paris seven years after their father was murdered. Surprisingly, she encounters her ex-boyfriend "Louis" (Serge Reggiani) who just happens to be plotting to visit the same comeuppance on the dictator who committed that very murder. Reluctantly, "Maria" agrees to carry the bag that contains a bomb, and to leave it adjacent to their quarry, but their timings go awry and soon the police are looking for the murderer of an innocent party guest. Wracked with guilt, she finds herself trapped between the authorities and her erstwhile friends who are determined she is to keep her mouth shut. As a drama it isn't really up to much, but this does feature a strong performance from Miss Cortese as a woman conflicted. Her principles and idealism are suddenly compromised when the her own safety is on the line - and this actress carries that off quite well. Reggiani is also quite effective as the manipulative freedom fighter for whom nothing but the cause is his motto, and there is a decent supporting cast including Irene Worth, Megs Jenkins and Charles Goldner to keep a familiar feel to the thing too. It's a rather uninspiring title for a better than average and characterful film that is worth watching - if just for an on-form Cortese.
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shbruce17 December 2005This is a seriously under-rated work of classical British film art on a compelling subject and is as relevant to London life today as it ever was. Considering this film was released in 1952 it explores so perceptively the path from praiseworthy ideology, through working for a noble cause, into terrifying involvement in an act of pure terrorism. Right through you are steadily but inexorably drawn with a lure of truth and justice, into a slowly evolving web of intrigue, conspiracy and ultimately murder, and it leaves you wondering at which point do you actually stray from idealism and decency into cold depravity? Given the '50s context, centred on an urban minority family, the actual plot is still frighteningly relevant and this film is surely just waiting for a re-make to bring it chillingly up to date. Until then, if you can find a copy of this film, watch it - its a vital and absorbing education, in the grand old style, on the strong subject of ideology.
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Valentina Cortese here delivers an inspired performance as a refugee from either Italy or Spain who flees to London in the late 1930s with her younger sister because their father has been assassinated by the dictator who has taken over their country, modelled on General Franco. She takes refuge with Anselmo, a family friend who runs a London café. We skip forward by several years and the sister is now played by the young and charming Audrey Hepburn, who gets to do some of her ballet dancing in the film. All should be well, but it isn't. Anselmo decides to take the two gals to Paris for a weekend, and there they meet 'Louie', Valentina's lost love from Italy. He has become a member of the terrorist underground and is trying to assassinate his country's dictator, who is about to visit London where there will be a chance at a garden party. Louie has changed, become hardened and ruthless, and he uses the sweet-natured Valentina and her love for him as the means to get to London and ends up persuading her to carry a small bomb into the garden party, where it misfires and kills a waitress. She is arrested and blurts everything out to Scotland Yard. The terrorist group will kill anyone who spills the beans, so Scotland Yard have to give her an assumed identity and she is not allowed to see her beloved sister again. Everything gets more and more harrowing, and unlike Valentina's far-fetched previous film, HOUSE ON TELEGRAPH HILL (1951, see my review), the story here is very convincing. We begin to realize how one toe in the water in such cases can easily lead to you drowning! Serge Reggiani makes a very powerful Louie, who is able to manipulate people and make them do what he wants. Irene Worth makes an early and sympathetic film appearance as a police woman. This film is very well written and directed by Thorold Dickinson and is something of a lost gem which has fortunately now been issued on DVD.
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The main action of the film takes place in 1937 in London, and inevitably it brings to mind Hitchcock's "Sabotage" of the year before, exposing the same problem: a terrorist act goes wrong and innocents go down as casualties, leading to crushing problems of remorse and conscience. Valentina Cortese is the great actress and character here, coming to England with her younger sister as political refugees apparently from Italy after her and her sister's (Audrey Hepburn's) father has been assassinated by a fascist general. They manage well in England and become British citizens, and everything is perfect, until Valentina's former lover comes too England to partake in an assassination attempt on the very general that killed her father, as he comes for a visit. He persuades her to deliver the bomb, she is extremely reluctant to it but is persuaded, and she knows it is wrong and does it anyway for his sake. That's the knot that cannot be untied, since the consequences turn out not according to plan. Audrey plays herself here as the ballerina she actually first trained herself to be, and every minute of her is worth gloating on. Charles Goldner also makes a great performance as their guardian, "adopted uncle", watching carefully over the sisters and understanding too much of what is going on. It is not as great a film as Hitchcock's "Sabotage" but indeed next to it and a worthy following up on the eternal problem of the justification or not of political crimes against tyrants.
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Weirdling_Wolf7 October 2021Gifted film-maker Thorold Dickinson's wholly fascinating, densely layered assassination plot roiling at the blackened centre of 'Secret People' makes for an uncommonly gripping, tautly scripted, insidiously paranoid political thriller, emboldened with some exquisite ensemble acting from a talented cast, with an especially luminous, visibly limber turn from a sweetly youthful, delightfully vivacious Audrey Hepburn. 'Secret People' has a remarkably dark and gritty atmosphere, having some darkly delicious, nerve-jangling tense interludes, coming to a genuinely thrilling, palm-swealtering exciting conclusion, and it would be foully remiss to ignore the starkly menacing performance by charismatic Italian cinema icon Serge Reggiani as the increasingly dastardly, cruelly manipulative 'Louis', who all too effectively playing the masterfully murderous agitator!
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tieman6430 May 2015Written and directed by Thorold Dickinson, "Secret People" (1952) finds Maria Brenatano (Valentina Cortese) and her younger sister (Audrey Hepburn) escaping a fascist dictatorship and fleeing to 1930s London. Once in London, the duo live with friends and attempt to adjust to local customs.
Early in "Secret People", Maria meets Louis (Serge Reggiani), a childhood sweetheart who works for a radical group intent on assassinating the unnamed dictator Maria's family has fled. This dictator is visiting British dignitaries, and so Louis requires Maria's assistance to smuggle a bomb into his presence. Maria thus finds herself torn between loyalty to her adopted homeland and loyalty to Louis' terrorist group. The film ends with Maria betraying Louis and admonishing those who would bring violence to the shores of a kindly, all inclusive, democratic nation like Great Britain. As Britain's long had ties to fascist regimes, as it has long operated fascist groups as the strong-arm of its ruling class, and as it specialises in backing terrorists, dictatorships, theocracies and far-right groups (everything from Mussolini to Charles Maxwell Knight, a proud fascist and wartime head of MI5), the film's creepy message reeks of hypocrisy.
If "Secret People" has a bright spot, it's young Audrey Hepburn who twirls her way through Dickson's film like a ray of sunshine. Svelte and chirpy, Hepburn's role here would get her noticed by director William Wyler, who'd cast her in "Roman Holiday". The rest's history.
6/10 – See "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold". -
robwmiles29 July 2023This is not a crime film. It is a political and social thriller about the grooming of young immigrant women by terrorists. Its explores the moral dilemmas of refugees making a new life in a new country and being groomed and blackmailed into terrorism. I've rated it 10 because it needs to be seen and watched as a historically important. Yes a young Audrey Hepburn is a delight, but she plays the naive groomed refugee well. Few films deal with these issues and I can think of no other prepared to do so over 50 years ago. Valentina Cortese is excellent as the female lead but I wonder what audiences in 1952 made of the story line? Now, with hindsight we know how relevant it is,, but did they then?