Classic Hollywood's love affair with international locations acquired a political purpose during World War II, when all of the studios turned out film tributes to America's allies. For this wartime thriller, MGM turned parts of its back lot into Brittany and even cast French star Jean Pierre Aumont, in his U.S. film debut, in a dual role as a Frenchman collaborating with the Nazis and a lookalike Resistance hero who takes his place to learn the location of a secret German naval base. Aumont was one of the few French actors in the film, which filled the South of France with Englishmen, Americans and even a Swiss miss. But he was very much the real thing. Like his character, Aumont had served heroically in North Africa during the war and received the Legion of Honor and the Croix de Guerre. In fact, after only one more film in Hollywood, Cross of Lorraine (1944), he returned to fight with the Free French. Even in Hollywood, he supported the war effort, appearing at special screenings of Assignment in Brittany, to help raise funds for the Resistance. Joining him in the film are Margaret Wycherly and Susan Peters as the collaborator's wife and girlfriend and Signe Hasso (in her U.S. debut) as his mistress.

By Frank Miller