ABSTRACT
It was important for the British, in their belief that they were fighting a just war against a tyrannical power, to believe that occupied Europe was only waiting for a signal to rise up and overthrow its oppressors. Adventure, secrecy, the threat of torture and death, daredevil missions, the prevalence of beautiful and mysterious women, made the resistance an ideal subject for film-makers. A resistance cycle followed on naturally from those phoney war films concerned with rooting out spies and rescuing eminent scientists and scholars from the clutches of the Nazis. Dilys Powell, writing in 1947, remembered that:
From the Continent, across the Channel, travellers came back with stories beyond the invention of men; a dark curtain of secrecy had been lowered, but the British knew that beyond it a great war of sacrifice and desperation was being fought.2
