Film Review
Night Train to Munich is
another sterling effort from the great writing team Sidney Gilliat and
Frank Launder, evoking memories of their earlier train-based thriller,
The
Lady Vanishes (1938), directed by
Alfred Hitchcock. Carol Reed may have directed this later film,
but it is the mischievous Gilliat-Launder imprint that is more noticeable,
particularly in the comic incursions into what is otherwise a serious
thriller plot.
Although Margaret Lockwood received top billing, she has very little to
do in the film other than be ferried about from one location to another
like a misplaced item of luggage. It is her two co-stars - Rex
Harrison and Paul Henreid - who give most value. Only ten years
into his film career, Harrison is already sending himself up,
apparently mocking his deficiencies as a singer and his limitations as
an actor. Meanwhile, as the villainous yet strangely likeable
Nazi agent Marsen, Henreid gives a skilfully judged performance that
surpasses his more famous turn as Humphrey Bogart's rival in
Casablanca
(1942).
The film's most enjoyable scenes are those in which Naunton Wayne and
Basil Radford appear, in a reprise of their roles of cricketing
fanatics Caldicott and Charters, last seen in
The Lady Vanishes. Their
presence - as a pair of bumbling cricket-obsessed Englishmen who
bravely put on their pads and knock out a six when the opposing team
throws a googly (whatever that means) - makes the film an effective
call to arms, far more subtle that what we find in the plethora of
wartime propaganda films that followed.
© James Travers 2008
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Carol Reed film:
The Stars Look Down (1940)
Film Synopsis
Just before his country is annexed by Nazi Germany, the Czech inventor
Axel Bomasch manages to escape to England, but his daughter Anna is
arrested and sent to a concentration camp. With the help of
another prisoner, Karl Marsen, Anna breaks out of the camp and arrives
safely in England. Anna does not know that Marsen is a Nazi agent
and before she knows it she and her father on their way to
Germany. During her brief stay in England, Anna made contact with
Gus Bennett, a British spy posing as a music hall singer.
Assuming the identity of a Gestapo officer, Bennett contrives to get
Anna and her father out of Germany, but the plan goes awry when a man
who knew him at Oxford blows his cover...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.