Bon Voyage (1944)

A young Scottish RAF gunner is debriefed by French officials about his escape from occupied territory, and in particular one person who may or may not have been a German agent.

Director:

Alfred Hitchcock

Star:

John Blythe

Cast

Cast overview:
John Blythe	...	RAF Sgt. John Dougall

Storyline

A young Scottish RAF gunner is debriefed by French officials about his escape from occupied territory, and in particular one person who may or may not have been a German agent.

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Plot Keywords:

raf | gunner | german agent | escape | two word title | 

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Genres:

Short | War

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Certificate:

TV-G

Details

Country:

UK

Language:

French English

Release Date:

June 1944 (Portugal)

Also Known As:

Gute Reise

Filming Locations:

Welwyn Studios, Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, England, UK

Company Credits

Production Co:

Ministry of Information,Phoenix

Technical Specs

Runtime:

26 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Alfred Hitchcock was paid £10 per week while working on this film. That would equate to about $40 at the time or about $560 in 2017.

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Quotes

Free French Colonel: One of the regulars at that cafe was a small-time Vichy spy. Stefan lighting an English cigarette there was no accident. It was a bit like yelling "Vive de Gaulle!" at Gestapo headquarters. The idea was to attract the attention not only of the spy but of the man and woman from the Resistance whom you later saw in the wine cellar.

User Reviews

Viewer beware

Disclaimer: This review is based on versions of Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache as seen on Turner Classic Movies. These versions were copyrighted 1993, and I'm assuming they are the same versions previously available on VHS and more recently on DVD. The following criticism is aimed at saving people much grief and money. If someone has seen the DVD and can disqualify any of my remarks, I welcome you to do so. There are so few accurate reviews of obscure DVDs.

Alfred Hitchcock made Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache (Madagascar Adventure) in 1944 to help the war effort by encouraging the French Resistance. The only people who have ever heard of these short films are Hitchcock fanatics, but even the most die-hard fans need not waste any time looking for these rarities. There is little in Bon Voyage and nothing in Aventure Malgache to indicate the hand of Hitchcock. Both films are in French and suffer from boring framing stories hung with flashbacks and constant voice-over narration. It is unlike Hitch to use so much dialog and the subtitles are difficult to read. The white lettering is hard to read against lighter parts of the background and at least half of the subtitles in Bon Voyage are cropped off the bottom of the screen.

Aventure Malgache tells of the French Resistance smuggling people out of Nazi-controlled Madagascar and is a completely forgettable film. Bon Voyage is more interesting. It tells of a British flier who has escaped from a POW camp. He is traveling with another escaped POW and helped by the Resistance, but there are double-crosses and murder in their path. However, only the murder scenes look like Hitchcock while the other scenes are very static. There is minimal camera movement and when the actors aren't sitting around talking they are shuffling around like zombies. The cropped subtitles leave viewers guessing at many of the finer details. Many references to passwords, place-names, and other important details (something about a cigarette used as a signal) are completely illegible. Bon Voyage does include the "old Gestapo trick" that Martin Landau mentions near the end of North By Northwest, but this is the only connection I could see to Hitch's other films.

If the DVD is significantly better than what I have described (new subtitles in yellow, for instance), please write a review saying so. It is very hard to find detailed reviews of obscure foreign films on DVD. Now I'm going to go critique the 1990 version of Cyrano.