I'm writing from home, off work for a while, and I've got a couple of Brrittish spy flicks for you, of a type they seem to favor - half-serious, half-comic and jolly well entertaining. Both feature female heroines, civilian gals who stumble into the spy trade by accident. In our first film, "Highly Dangerous"(1950), watched last night, I didn't see the comedy coming. You don't expect humor when the subject is germ warfare. Margaret Lockwood stars as an entomologist working for a government lab in England. When her boss asks her to make a surreptitious visit to a small communist country, to gather information on a biolab, she at first declines. After all, she's not a secret agent. "Maybe you can find someone more suitable", she tells him. But as she's giving him a lift home, she tunes her car radio to a spy serial broadcast. She's listening on behalf of her nephew, who loves the show but hasn't got a radio at home. "I update him on the story", she tells her boss. We then see her sitting down with the young lad, telling him all about it. The topic of the radio show - intelligence agents saving the world from disaster - gets her to thinking. Her boss mentioned the importance of halting the work at the biolab. "If they successfully develop germ weaponry, millions of lives could be lost".
She calls him up to ask if the job is still open. "Of course it is. We didn't have anyone else in mind".
So, after being provided with the ubiquitous fake identity, she flies to the foreign country in question. Her contact sets her up at a hotel and arranges to take her past the checkpoints that border the laboratory. Her mission is to gain access to the lab, with the help of her contact, and remove some of the insects that are being bred there, so that scientists in England can study them and develop an antidote. In an aside, I should mention that I wasn't aware that bugs were used in germ warfare, but I guess it makes sense since they carry germs. In this case, the bugs are Mediterranean fruit flies, remembered here in California for the Medfly fiasco of the mid-1980s.
Back to the plot, before her contact can drive her to the laboratory, he's shot dead. Not only that, but his body is dumped in Lockwood's hotel room, along with the gun that killed him. Someone is trying to frame her. Has her cover been blown? On her way to the city from the airport, she shared a train compartment with the local police chief. He made small talk but seemed to accept her claim of being a travel agent. Now though, he's hauling her in on a murder charge. She protests : "I'm a British subject! I demand to speak with the Embassy". The chief, a sly character in a spiffy Panama hat, lets her know that he rifled her handbag while she was using the restroom. "And I found a microscope! Might you tell me why a travel agent would need one"?
She is taken into a back room and given the third degree. It looks like something out of "The Manchurian Candidate" : hypnotic drugs, bright lights and one repeated question : "Tell me what you're doing here"! Lockwood eventually passes out and is placed back in her cell. The next day, she's able to get hold of the ambassador and a deal is struck. The chief will drop all charges if she'll leave the country. She agrees, but the chief, certain she's a spy, assigns a security goon to accompany her at all times until her plane leaves.
At the hotel bar, she meets an American reporter (Dane Clark). Grateful for a friendly face, she accepts his offer of a drink. But it's a ruse. He knows her true identity, having seen her photo in a science magazine. "A science magazine"?, she exclaims. "Nobody reads those things except scientists"! "Well I did", he answers. "Hey, it's my job to know things". It's at this point, about a half-hour in, that the movie changes from serious espionage into popcorn action/adventure. Clark talks her into completing her mission. "I can get you past those checkpoints too, and it'll give me something to write about, the scoop of a lifetime"! Lockwood and Clark ascend to the roles of Citizen Superheroes as they dodge sentries and cut barbed wire in order to break into the biolab. The shot of the interior, which is "sci-fi awesome", shows the lab in all it's glory : rows and rows of shiny tanks and tubes, glowing from within like in a Hangar 18 scenario. The banter by now has turned fast on the verge of Screwball. We're meant to know that Lockwood and Clark are in way over their heads but are intrepid enough to foil the foolish Commies.
Margaret Lockwood, who we've seen in "Night Train to Munich", is a lovely actress, demurely beautiful and appealing in a non-showy way. And we've seen Dane Clark in many films, playing roles that vary from hoodlums to heroes with all shades between. His characters had an Everyman quality regardless of temperament, making him likeable, the Guy You Always Root For.
An actor named Marius Goring gives the Communist police chief a nice bit of style, friendly yet sinister in his vacationer's clothing and what looks like a false moustache. The radio show Lockwood listens to early on will be used as a clever device, when she turns from scientist into savior of humanity. "Highly Dangerous" would've been the English equivalent of a Saturday Night at the Movies, and it still works 70 years later, in fact it was ahead of it's time in one respect : some fans at IMDB say it was the first film to mention germ warfare. It's also topical in the pandemic era for obvious reasons.
Two Big Thumbs Up then. I loved it, you will too. //////
The previous night's picture was "Candlelight in Algeria"(1944) starring Carla Lehmann as an American sculptress living in Algiers in 1942. As a citizen of the U.S., which is neutral to Algeria, she lives in relative peace, until one day Chames Mason appears and turns her life on it's head.
He's a British agent just escaped from jail who is wanted by the German Armistice Office in Algiers. Algeria at the time was a French colony under the control of the Vichy government, a right-wing regime that capitulated to the Nazis with the understanding that it would be treated as an ally. The French were not willing to give up their colonial holdings, however, and a truce was negotiated, whereas Germany would be given military control of North Africa (under nominal French rule), and the French would continue to police it. But in reality they were working for the Germans. For the Vichy, it was a way to maintain what power they could, even if it was in name only.
One day, Lehmann is working on a bust of Franklin Roosevelt, when Mason bursts into her home, on the run from enemy agents. He talks her into hiding him, in dialogue fast and furious. Once again, we're verging on Screwball of the dry, British variety, only this time (as opposed to "Highly Dangerous") we're into it from the get-go. Whereas "Dangerous" began as a serious film that morphed into light comedy, "Candlelight" alternates between the two styles. When Mason runs into her living room, his banter with Lehmann is expository, advising us of the plot while setting a charming tone.
He needs to recover a camera that has film of a Top Secret nature. Will Lehmann help him? Yes, because he's Chames Freaking Mason, whose Impeccable London Accent can never be resisted. The camera is stashed at the mansion of the regional Nazi commandant. Lehmann's job is to bump into him, accidentally/on purpose, at the nearby Officer's Club, and charm him into posing for a bust. While inside his house, she's to look for and recover the camera. The only problem is that the commandant has a wife who already suspects him of cheating. She's a vase-throwing Virago who won't hesitate to deck her hubby if she catches him in Lehmann's clutches. This is where the comedy comes in again, as both husband and wife Nazi are played for caricature effect. He is flattered, though, by being a subject for sculpture, and takes Lehmann up on her offer. She finds the camera and brings it back to Mason. But he still hasn't told her what pictures it contains.
They end up at The Casbah, "the home of every criminal in Algiers", where Mason has a girl (Pamela Stirling) who will do anything for him. She's jealous of Lehmann, too, but in a fatalistic French way ("Ces't la guerre"!), and agrees to help the two secure transport up the coast, where Mason will deliver enlargements from the camera film to unnamed persons. By now, of course, there's a German agent on their tail, the Nazis being "not as sty-oopid as you've assumed we were" (said in that "a-HA"! way of theirs).
This time, I've revealed much less of the plot than I usually do, because it's complex but also because it'll be fun for you to see it unfold for yourself. I will tell you that the story is based on a real life conference that took place in October 1942, that lead to the implementation of Operation Torch, the Allied plan to invade North Africa. I mentioned in an earlier blog that I became interested in Torch, and ordered a book about it, when I saw it depicted in a War Department movie. Prior to that, I'd never heard of it. My interest derives from my Dad's war experience, which began in North Africa in November 1943, and was made possible by the success of Operation Torch.
As for "Candlelight in Algeria", it also gets Two Big Thumbs Up, and would make a great double-bill with "Highly Dangerous". So there you have it, two rousing selections from the spy trade, fun but in serious contexts. ////
That's all for the moment. I know I'm late again but promise to get caught up during my time off. Last night I listened to my new Beach Boys cd, "Sunflower", a work from their mellow early 70s period. I'm really getting into the Boys and appreciating their musical genius, which was more than just surfin' USA. Also still in Canterbury mode (when am I not?) and tonight will be playing "The Polite Force" by Egg, a band I am new to and flabbergasted by. Have a tremendous day and I'll see ya soon. Gotta get the blog schedule back on track!
Tons of love as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
No comments:
Post a Comment