Mademoiselle Fifi is a 1944 American period film directed by Robert Wise for RKO, in his solo directorial debut.

Since it was produced in Hollywood during the Second World War, in the same year Paris was liberated from Nazi rule, it contains elements of wartime propaganda, evoking Jeanne D’Arc among other heroes of French history, and holding up French people in occupied territory who follow orders as objects of pity or outrage, depending on their circumstances.

Unlike her social betters, who have all fraternized with the enemy, and had them as guests in their homes, Elizabeth is a simple patriot, and will not eat or consort with the invaders of her country, so the coach cannot go on.

While she is closeted with the arrogant Prussian, whose aim is to humiliate and degrade her (essentially he forces her to agree to be raped) the rest of the travellers celebrate their deliverance by getting drunk on champagne, and following the progress of the evening's encounter through the sounds coming from upstairs.

Elizabeth feels she must go, as the Prussians threaten to withhold their business from her aunt's laundry unless she does and unless she encourages the other young women to attend.

[2] Prior to directing Mademoiselle Fifi, his first official solo directorial credit, film editor Robert Wise had directed retakes and additional sequences on The Magnificent Ambersons while Orson Welles was in South America, and had replaced director Gunther von Fritsch on Val Lewton's The Curse of the Cat People.

[3] Lewton and Wise studied hundreds of period paintings by artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec, Delacroix, Daumier and Detaille, to find the look they wanted.

[6] Turner Classic Movies’ Roger Fristoe observes that the film draws strong parallels between that era and the Nazi invasion of the 1940s, admiring the simple people who remained faithful to their country's principles and censuring those who collaborated with the enemy for selfish reasons.

James Agee wrote in The Nation: I don't know of any American film which has tried to say as much, as pointedly, about the performance of the middle class in war.

There is a gallant, fervent quality about the whole picture, faults and all, which gives it a peculiar kind of life and likeableness, and which signifies that there is one group of men working in Hollywood who have neither lost nor taken care to conceal the purity of their hope and intentions.