Undercover (1943 film)

Undercover is a major 1943 war film produced by Ealing Studios in London, originally titled Chetnik. It was filmed in Wales and released onJuly 1943. The subject was the Yugoslav guerrilla movement in Germanoccupied Yugoslavia loosely based on the Draza Mihailovich resistance movement. The movie was produced by Sir Michael Balcon and directed by Sergei Nolbandov. It starred John Clements as Milosh Petrovitch, Mary Morris as Anna Petrovitch, his wife, Stephen Murray as Stephan Petrovitch, his brother, Michael Wilding as Constantine, and Stanley Baker as Petar. The movie was rereleased in the United States in 1944 by Columbia Pictures under the title Underground Guerrillas. The Ealing movie was similar to the 20th Century Fox wartime film Chetniks The Fighting Guerrillas 1943 made in the U.S. The plot revolves around a resistance movement that emerges in Yugoslavia after the German invasion in 1941. The guerrillas are able to blow up trains, engage in sabotage, and to battle German troops. In the final scene, the guerrillas are shown going into the Serbian mountains to continue their resistance struggle until the German forces are driven out of the country. The movie was released on DVD on January 25, 2010 by Optimum Home Entertainment in the UK.

The screenplay, by John Dighton and Monja Danischewsky, was accordingly amended and the movie reedited. It was a black and white war movie, 80 minutes in length, that focused on the Petrovitch family in Belgrade, Serbia. One brother, Captain Milosh Petrovitch, a Yugoslav military officer, played by John Clements, emerges as a Serbian guerrilla who forms an antiNazi resistance movement in the mountains of Serbia. The other brother, Dr. Stephan Petrovitch, played by Stephen Murray, is a physician in the Belgrade Municipal Hospital who acts as a quisling or collaborator to obtain information for the guerrillas. German General von Staengel, played by Godfrey Tearle, does not suspect that Stephan is an undercover agent for the Serbian guerrillas.Using information obtained by Stephan, the guerrillas are able to ambush a German train and to free Yugoslav POWs, wound General Staengel, and to blow up a strategic railway tunnel in the mountains. In retaliation, German troops under Colonel von Brock, played by Robert Harris, execute six Serbian schoolchildren in retaliation and as a lesson. Anna Petrovitch, Miloshs wife, is taken prisoner by German forces and interrogated. She escapes and rejoins Milosh in the mountains. ........

Source: Wikipedia