War in the Shadows
Director Jean-Paul Salomé has said that he got the idea for his new film Female Agents (original title Les Femmes de l’Ombre—Women in the Shadows) in 2004 when he read the Times obituary of April 24 for Lise Villameur, who had died aged ninety-eight. From 1942 to 1945 as Lise de Baissac she had been the only female agent to run her own network in occupied France for the British Special Operations Executive.
It is easy to see why Salomé found her story so fascinating. De Baissac had been a formidable agent who had played a major part in sabotaging German transport after D-Day. Also, judging from the official photographs, she was very beautiful, with a striking resemblance to Michele Morgan, one of the great French film stars of the period. It was an ideal part for the extraordinary Sophie Marceau, who at forty-one is about the same age as de Baissac was when she was operating as an agent in 1944—and Marceau is equally if not more attractive….
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
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6 mins
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23 mins
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2 mins