Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard steam up early 'Allied' scenes

NEW YORK — The official trailer arrives today for Allied, the World War II spy drama with awards-season aspirations that stars Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard. It’s a longer version of the teaser released Sept. 20, the same day news broke that Angelina Jolie had filed for divorce from Pitt.

But we’ve seen even more sexy footage from the Robert Zemeckis-directed film, in theaters Nov. 23, thanks to a sneak peek for journalists. After the 20-minute screening, one wag dubbed it “Mr. and Mrs. Smith meets Casablanca.”

'Allied' trailer released the same day as the Brangelina divorce

In about a half-dozen scenes shown by Paramount Pictures, sparks fly as intelligence officer Max Vatan (Pitt) and French resistance fighter Marianne Beausejour (Cotillard) put on a show pretending to be husband and wife to fool the Nazis. Later, they throw caution to the, er, wind behind enemy lines in North Africa, shedding a good portion of their period clothes for a steamy sex scene in a vintage car, which rocks violently as a desert storm swirls around them.

Allied is no ordinary movie. Like Mr. and Mrs. Smith — the 2005 comedic spy thriller that famously spawned "Brangelina," with Pitt and Jolie playing married assassins hired to kill each other — Allied arrives with its stars in the spotlight because of their personal lives.

A scene in which Max and Marianne take target practice in the desert — she’s a crack shot who doesn’t know how to use the weapon’s safety — recalls some of the shoot-’em-up wisecracking in Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Allied even has a dance scene with dialogue that suggests Pitt and Cotillard's characters may be falling in love, but it's 1940s tame compared to Mr. and Mrs. Smith's charged tango.

Cotillard flirts like the Oscar winner she is when a cautious Pitt enters Marianne's apartment for the first time as her “husband,” and says he'll sleep on the couch. But she tells him he'll sleep on the roof, like the local men do after making love to their wives. She soon joins him under the stars; they kiss on the lips (after he first gives her a peck on the forehead) for the sake of a nosy neighbor married to a German officer and banter about the great sex they didn’t really have.

The scenes screened for journalists are from early in the movie, as Max and Marianne establish their connection as spies, before they marry for real and have a baby, and Max learns his wife may be a Nazi double agent.

Jolie filed for divorce from Pitt two weeks ago, citing the “health of the family.” The couple has arrived at a temporary arrangement for Jolie to get full custody of their six children, with Pitt allowed to visit, TMZ and the Associated Press reported. Pitt agreed to random drug/alcohol testing after he was accused, anonymously, of verbally and physically abusing one of his kids while on a private plane.

Marion Cotillard denies Brad Pitt rumor

Meanwhile, Cotillard was pulled into the fray by speculation of an on-set affair. She responded on Instagram, calling her partner, French actor/director Guillaume Canet, "my love, my best friend, the only one that I need" and saying she is pregnant with their second child.