State Secret (a.k.a. The Great Manhunt) (1950)

Directed by Sidney Gilliat; produced by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder

John Marlowe (Douglas Fairbanks Jr) is a pioneering surgeon who has been invited to the central European nation of Vosnia to demonstrate an innovative technique to the country’s top doctors. This includes a practical demonstration on a patient. Though Vosnia is a totalitarian dictatorship, Marlowe sees the invitation as a way of opening the land up to outside influences. Things become uncomfortable for Marlowe, however, when he learns that the patient is actually Vosnia’s ruler, General Niva. And things become deadly when post-operative complications put Niva’s life - and Marlowe’s - in danger.

State Secret is an entry in the ‘man on the run’ film genre, in the tradition of 1935’s The 39 Steps, and others. Gilliat and Launder had written similar, and successful, fare previously, in The Lady Vanishes and Night Train to Munich. This later movie is produced by the partners’ own production company, and written by Gilliat alone. Though good, it doesn’t quite measure up to its predecessors: there is a crispness lacking in the script (perhaps that was Launder’s contribution in the past) and a connection among the performers.

The acting itself cannot be faulted. Fairbanks does very well as the earnest doctor, pleased with his work and happy to share it with others. His behaviour under stress - possibly facing death - is credible and involving. Jack Hawkins has an excellent part as a Vosnian government minister, Colonel Galcon, a polite, urbane man who thinks nothing of massacre, if it suits the needs of his masters. Glynis Johns is entirely believable as the young music-hall artiste who is roped into helping Marlowe along the way.

One of the problems is the chemistry between Fairbanks and Johns. There is none. Fairbanks, looking older than his 41 years, and Johns, looking younger than her 27, interact well, but there is no indication that their characters even really like each other, never mind have a spark that even a platonic relationship must have to be entertaining.

There are hints that their shared adventure might result in romance, but the script didn’t push that, as if realizing that the audience wouldn’t buy it. There is, in fact, more fascination in the cat-and-mouse actions and words between Marlowe and Galcon.

The writing makes use of a deus ex machine that, while providing irony, is as unsatisfying as it is unexpected.

Even so, the story will keep the viewer interested, even if the script does not. The actions of the authorities in the police state are realistic and create a genuine air of fear and suspense. The use of words such as ‘deviationist’ and ‘crypto-fascist’ to describe enemies of the state imply that it has a communist regime. As well, Marlowe says that he planned to visit Vosnia back in 1939, to which a Vosnian official replied that much has changed since then: the countries of eastern Europe were forced into communism immediately after the Second World War.

The direction is good, though not very good. There is a pointless sequence near the beginning in which, through a flashback, Marlowe explains the origins of his situation. For several minutes, we see the action through his eyes, only to have that viewpoint abandoned.

The location shooting, probably in Croatia or northern Italy, is very well used, and not the usual setting for movies. Another aspect of the film that aids it tremendously is the use of the Vosnian language. There is no Vosnian language, any more than there is a Vosnia. The language was made up for the movie, from Romance languages (probably Italian, from the looks of how it’s written) and Slavic. Unlike many films, which create a few words in a fictional dialect, State Secret’s script has whole conversations in Vosnian, between dozens of people, most of them bit-players. This, and the physical setting, makes Vosnia seem real. Cleverly added is what sounds like the Vosnian national anthem, which serves as the theme music.

There are some very good moments in State Secret. Scenes such as those in the high mountains, and when Marlowe first realises his predicament, are tense. Herbert Lom, as a black marketeer, provides some grim comedy and a different perspective on the film’s events.

State Secret can’t compare with the more enjoyable, earlier products of the Gilliat-Launder partnership, but it is a good adventure movie, realistic and adequately exciting.

 

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)

Directed by Lewis Milestone; produced by Hal B Wallis

In 1928, a young girl, Martha Ivers (Janis Wilson) attempts to run away from her unfeeling, dictatorial aunt (Judith Anderson), with the assistance of Sam (Darryl Hickman), a kid from the poor part of town. Brought back, she strikes her aunt in a fit of anger, killing her. Aided by Walter (Mickey Kuhn), whose father hopes to control the Ivers’ wealth, Martha persuades everyone that a burglar committed the murder. Eighteen years later, Martha (Barbara Stanwyck) is as manipulative as her aunt had been and married to Walter (Kirk Douglas), the two chained together by the secret of the old killing, and the execution of an innocent man for the crime. And when Sam (Van Heflin) returns to Iverstown, guilt, passion and opportunity create an explosive situation.

From the beginning, the viewer can guess that The Strange Love of Martha Ivers is not going to end well for a number of the characters. It is a tragedy in the true sense: disasters wrought by the flaws of the characters. The interest, indeed the involvement - for it is an involving film, thanks to the acting and the script - comes in seeing how the characters comport themselves in the downward descent, and whether any is worth saving.

Of course, some are. Heflin’s Sam is a likeable rogue, someone who, the police discover, lives by gambling. He is not always successful, but always bounces back from adversity. His relationship with Toni (Lizabeth Scott), another abused soul with a bad past, begins with flirtation and moves to real affection, though part of it comes from Sam’s innate dislike of seeing anyone hurt. The romance between these two is natural and, if it hadn’t happened in Iverstown, probably would have proceeded smoothly, and without trouble.

Kirk Douglas has a stand-out part for his first motion picture role. Quite different than the often heroic characters he would play in later films, his Walter is spineless, the plaything of stronger, or at least more ruthless, people. He is also a rather decent man, deep down, caught in a web of lies and crimes too great to escape without irrevocable loss; he knows he is weak, he knows he is ordinary, and some of his scenes are almost heart-breaking in their sense of longing for redemption.

I don’t believe the writers ever intended for Martha to be sympathetic; she is too heartless, too selfish, too arrogant for that. Whatever she may have been as the little girl, she grew to be quite like her aunt. It is never stated that Martha has become her aunt, but that is the ultimate outcome of her tragedy. Stanwyck gives her usual excellent performance in a role that other strong actresses, such as Bette Davis, would have envied.

The script is melodramatic at times, but nevertheless creates a credible situation, though it is in the actions of the characters that it shows its realism. The story is not so much one of power corrupting as it is of knowing when one should be satisfied with what one has, rather than striving for ever more.

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers is a well-made, well-acted drama that verges on becoming a soap opera more than once, while its writing and acting pull it back into reality time and again.

 

Night Train to Munich (1940)

Directed by Carol Reed; produced by Edward Black

It’s several months before Germany starts the Second World War by invading Poland, and she has just seized Czechoslovakia. Too late to capture Czech scientist Axel Bomasch (James Harcourt), whose work on steel could revolutionise armoured warfare, the Nazis arrest his daughter, Anna (Margaret Lockwood), to use as a hostage. The SS have a better idea, however, and plot to use Anna to lead them to her father, now in England. Despatched to foil their plan is the deceptively casual Secret Service operator Dickie Randall (Rex Harrison). Soon, move and counter-move, improvisation and impersonation put everyone - and every scheme - in danger.

Night Train to Munich is in a very similar vein as The Lady Vanishes (1938), a light international adventure story with good plotting, imaginative dialogue, fine performances and memorable characters. The similarity is not surprising, as Sydney Gilliat and Frank Launder wrote both movies; both feature trains prominently, both have top-notch directors (Alfred Hitchcock, in the case of the earlier movie) and both star Margaret Lockwood. They are different enough to enjoy on their own merits, however.

The story is pretty fast-paced, after the characters reach England, and though the plan devised by Randall to whisk the scientist and his daughter from Germany borders on the school-boyish, it is not too far-fetched, given the fact that, as Randall states, he has just forty-eight hours to effect the rescue. Like The Lady Vanishes, though, the writing’s real attraction is in the script, rather than the story.

The dialogue is crisp and snappy, and, though given to numerous characters, is tailored to those characters. Especially noteworthy are the lines given to Charters and Caldicott (Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, respectively). Very popular in The Lady Vanishes, these two cricket-enthusiasts were carried over to this film, played by the same actors. Their dialogue is dry and droll, such as when taunted by a German Army officer about going back to England to find ‘safe jobs’ (war had just been declared.) Caldicott mutters, “What cheek! Safe jobs… As if they aren’t all taken, anyway…”

The script incorporates more realism than the story. There are several instances such as the one when a number of British civil servants (likely Secret Service officers) are sitting about discouraged, discussing the loss of the Czech scientist. In between ideas of how to salvage the situation, another gentleman comes into the room and reminds Randall’s boss of an imminent dinner-party, and his wife’s promise to bring a recipe book. Life goes on, even amid international crises.

Despite the war (perhaps because the full horror of Nazi atrocities was not yet known), Night Train to Munich shows the Germans as devoted Nazis, but also bound by the petty annoyances and restrictions of bureaucracy. Witness the station-mistress (Irene Handl), more concerned with getting passengers on and off a train than with the new war. Also, Raymond Huntley, playing an officer in the German Admiralty, seems simply trying to get through his day as easily and as untroubled as possible. This trait (along with actor Huntley) was shared in the recently reviewed movie Pimpernel Smith.

That the acting and writing work so well may be seen in small examples, such as C. V. France’s bit part as an old German admiral. His words and attitudes appear to come from an earlier age, the days of the kaiser, rather than the führer, which of course would be the case. That the film was able to convey this so clearly and concisely shows the talent involved. (And, incidentally, one learns things from old scripts, such as the fact that Berlin of 1939 had double-decker buses, and that what the British called doughnuts looked like muffins.)

Mention should be made as well of Paul von Hernried (later, better known as Paul Henreid), who plays a villain so suavely, and with enough sympathy for his enemies’ plight, that he comes across as almost likeable. The cat-and-mouse contest between Randall and Hernried’s character is highly entertaining. Also appearing in uncredited roles are Torin Thatcher, Hugh Griffiths and Ian Fleming (not the author; though, appropriately, the actor portrays a secret service official.)

All in all, Night Train to Munich is a fun ride, well-written, well-acted and well-directed.

 

The Case of the Frightened Lady (1940)

Directed by George King; produced by S. W. Smith

There are strange doings at Mark’s Priory, the seat of the ancient Lebanon family. The current Lord Lebanon (Marius Goring) is being pressured into marrying his mother’s secretary, Isla Crane (Penelope Dudley Ward), whose door has just been fitted with a bolt - on the outside; a sinister doctor (Felix Aylmer) is at the beck and call of the dowager Lady Lebanon (Helen Haye), for an unknown reason and for unknown purposes; a couple of insolent servants (Roy Emerton, George Hayes) lurk at every corner. It’s not surprising then that a murder is soon committed…

The Case of the Frightened Lady is adapted from a play by Edgar Wallace, one of the most prolific writers of the 1910s and ‘20s, specialising in thriller and adventure stories. He wrote a great many tales at great speed: a cartoon in a Punch magazine I have from the 1920s depicts a book-stall owner tempting a customer with the question, “Have you read today’s Wallace, sir?” It was inevitable that the then-new medium of the motion picture would take advantage of his output, even years after he died, relatively young. Unfortunately, the cinema was not always as kind to his talent as was the written word.

The movie opens with Isla screaming, her nerves frayed to the breaking point. It’s a good opening for a play but comes across as rather affected in a movie. Indeed the story can’t seem to break from its stage origins. This is not always a bad thing in a film, but added to the sets - too much action takes place in the mansion’s improbably wide hall - and the theatre-style direction, it makes for heavy viewing.

The story itself is more interesting than it initially appears. The twists it reveals as it nears its climax turn much of the viewers’ suspicions upside down, which is gratifying. The actual solution is not, unfortunately, as great a surprise. Nonetheless, the story, with its family secrets, old house, hidden passages and creeping servants is entertaining. That it is the sort that was often lampooned as the twentieth century progressed is not really its fault; rather like a cliché that wasn’t a cliché when it started.

Yet the old-fashioned nature of the melodrama is partly to blame for the movie’s failure. I am certainly not one to reject anything because it is either old, or old-fashioned, as readers of this blog may have noted by now. However, there is a large element of The Case of the Frightened Lady that simply doesn’t translate well from stage to screen.

That has little to do with the play’s age; rather, it takes more than just a decent cast and adequate director successfully to bring either a play or a book to the cinema. The stage was, for hundreds of years, the public’s equivalent of what television was in the 1950s and ‘60s. Dozens of plays were written and produced every week - a huge percentage of them, if Punch magazine’s review section may be judged, with detective and mystery plots. Like episodes of many tv series, not all of the plays were good.

At eighty-one minutes, The Case of the Frightened Lady should have moved along briskly; that it seemed rather longer than its running time is an indication of its sluggishness. Fun at times, generally entertaining, the film fails to hold the viewers’ interest throughout. Perhaps a live audience might have helped.