Merle Oberon plays a Norwegian resistance figure in a small town, married to a Nazi commandant. When his superiors begin to suspect her, the Allies land an assassin to kill him -- an assassin who happens to be her former lover.
Direction
Arzner centers female agency in a male-dominated genre.
Acting
Oberon performs three roles: wife, spy, and woman in love.
Production
Hollywood's Norway: suspiciously sunny, conveniently generic.

Director
Dorothy Arzner
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Arzner was the only woman directing studio features in 1940s Hollywood, and she quietly queered heteronormative narratives through performance and disguise.
This was Arzner's final film before her 27-year retirement from Hollywood, making it an accidental career epitaph on women surviving male systems.