Greenstreet/Lorre: The Verdict (1946)

We’ve come to the end of June, with five films starring Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre, and if we’ve learned anything, it’s this – the whole of the Greenstreet/Lorre partnership is truly greater than the sum of its parts. Aside from The Maltese Falcon (and excepting Casablanca, in which they share no scenes), it’s safe to say that Lorre and Greenstreet cement their reputations in spite of, not because of, the films they headlined together. When you think of these two, you’ll sooner think of the net effect of their personae than of any one film of theirs. Case in point: The Verdict, which is neither very engaging nor is it generous toward its stars, who more often than not seem bored with the whole affair.

Sydney Greenstreet stars as George Edward Grodman, late of Scotland Yard but dismissed when an innocent man is hanged after his alibi arrives too late for the courts. Grodman slinks into ignominious retirement across the street from his best friend, the artist Victor Emmric (Peter Lorre). But when a locked-door murder mystery confounds Grodman’s replacement (George Coulouris), Grodman and Emmric find the opportunity to clear the former superintendent’s name while putting the new inspector in his place.

 

Locked-door mysteries are always a treat, and I will say that the solution in The Verdict is ingenious – inherently unsolvable, yes, but a clever trick. It’s a bit of a cheat on the audience (who may or may not predict the ending simply by random supposition among the suspects), but without spoiling I’ll say that The Verdict did keep me guessing until the mystery was solved, as Aristotle would want it, in a manner that was both surprising and inevitable. But it’s that surprise element that nags at me, leading me to believe that the film’s relative disinterest in follow-along sleuthing might better position The Verdict as Victorian noir rather than as a Victorian detective story. Poirot, this ain’t.

 

Greenstreet’s Grodman is the quintessential down-on-his-luck gumshoe, aiming to clear his name by solving One Last Case. The Verdict is very nearly worth the price of admission for Greenstreet’s sideburns, which are almost as large as he is. But something in Greenstreet’s performance seems lackadaisical, not quite sleepwalking but certainly drowsy and a bit disinterested. There’s something of that attitude intrinsic to the character, who is worn out and loathing retirement; like some aspiring writers, he dreads the prospect of composing and of finishing his book. However, that ennui doesn’t quite connect with the audience in the way of, say, Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep. More often than not, Greensteet seems only to need a nap.

 

Lorre, too, plays a bit more droopy-eyed than usual. Compared to his more dynamic writer in The Mask of Dimitrios, this artist seems disaffected, animated only by the prospect of helping his friend get revenge of a sort on the man who edged him out of Scotland Yard. Though he is an artist by trade, he too spends little time on his craft, apparently welcoming the distraction. Lorre’s best scene is one of the last in the film, in which it appears he’s about to confess to the film’s central murder. He doesn’t, alas, one of the film’s many red herrings, but Lorre sells the very intimation of a confession with his guilty behavior and stooped posture. When he tells Grodman how tired he is, you don’t just believe him – you feel it. 

 

What I didn’t feel during the film, however, was captivated. I found myself wishing I were watching The Maltese Falcon instead, reminding myself of just how fully good Lorre and Greenstreet could be. Often the still images of the pair are fodder for my wild imagination, while the films themselves never quite live up to the productions in my own head. I suppose that’s partially my fault, especially since Peter Lorre is my all-time favorite actor; having seen how good he can be, I tend to imagine that his vehicles are always as engaging as, say, Arsenic and Old Lace or Mad Love. Similarly, Greenstreet can make a meal of a monologue, but it seems that the five films this month were content simply to rest on his reputation without giving him much opportunity to spread his ample wings and do something astonishing.

 

Theirs was an archetypal camaraderie, a Laurel & Hardy for the graveyard crowd. It’s sublimely grotesque when Greenstreet supervises the exhumation of a corpse in The Verdict, with Lorre peering over his shoulder to declare, “I have always had a suppressed desire to see a grave opened... especially at night.” It’s a line so creepy that you might expect it to have come from a Lorre impersonator, but to their credit Lorre and Greenstreet always knew their lanes, never afraid to play to their strengths and embrace the risk of caricature. Indeed, their cameo in Hollywood Canteen, a brief sequence in which they play themselves, is unmissable for its laser-focused blend of menace and mischief. Sometimes, just the idea of them is enough.

 

It’s certainly been enough to get me through this month. Even though the films themselves may not be classics, it’s impossible to imagine any fan of either actor not seeking these flicks out at one point or another. At an impressionable age, I pored over The Films of Peter Lorre with obsessive devotion, repeatedly renting it from the library to the point that I’m surprised the librarians didn’t just give me the book. I knew these two actors were capable of greatness, and we’ve proven as much over the past five weeks. But I also imagined what it would be like to see more great films with Lorre and Greenstreet. After this month, I suppose I’m still imagining.

 

The Verdict is not rated. Directed by Don Siegel. Written by Peter Milne. Based on the novel The Big Bow Mystery by Israel Zangwill. Starring Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Joan Lorring, George Coulouris, and Rosalind Ivan.

Greenstreet/Lorre: Three Strangers (1946)

After a few weeks of Casablanca knockoffs, it’s refreshing to arrive at Three Strangers and find that it is instead an off-brand version of The Maltese Falcon, with three unsavory characters who find their lives changed by their obsession with a bronze statue. Aside from the headlining duo of Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre, Three Strangers has a number of other tangential connections to The Maltese Falcon, but it’s ultimately a pale imitation of a greater film with good performances nonetheless from the usual suspects.

Crystal Shackleford (Geraldine Fitzgerald) invites two strangers to her apartment with an unlikely offer: her bronze statue of the goddess Kwan Yin will grant them all one wish at the stroke of midnight. The three strangers pool their resources on a sweepstakes ticket; charismatic drunk Johnny West (Peter Lorre) is charmed by the idea, but solicitor Jerome Arbutny (Sydney Greenstreet) is doubtful that he’ll see any money out of the affair. When the three part, their personal lives begin to crumble, but the looming promise of their joint ticket is never far from their minds.

 

Three Strangers is never quite a Maltese Falcon remake, though the connections are surprisingly myriad. You have the cast, yes, and the fixation with a mysterious statue, but you also have a screenplay co-written by John Huston. Director Jean Negulesco (who also helmed last week’s Mask of Dimitrios) had done some preproduction work on The Maltese Falcon before Huston claimed the project, while Geraldine Fitzgerald was an early contender for the Falcon role that eventually went to Mary Astor. Meanwhile, Three Strangers very nearly starred Humphrey Bogart in the Peter Lorre role, but Bogart was committed to The Big Sleep. Perhaps it’s just a big game of “six degrees on the Warner lot,” but it seems there is an unnatural tether between Three Strangers and its more perfect antecedent.

 

The greatest challenge in Three Strangers is that the three strangers spend most of the film estranged from one another. That is, aside from the opening and closing sequences, Greenstreet and Fitzgerald and Lorre never interact, which is both surprising and disappointing. One might expect, for example, that the strangers might find themselves in actuality tied to one another – particularly since one is a solicitor and another becomes involved in a murder trial. Instead, the plots branch off and never meet until the very ending scene at Crystal’s apartment, and consequently there are large sections of the movie that just aren’t very interesting. As has been the case all month, the few moments between Greenstreet and Lorre are so engaging that you’ll wish the whole movie had been made up of them. Apologies to Bogart, but they are the stuff dreams are made of.

 

Three Strangers is almost like watching three separate films that only tie together at the very end. Geraldine Fitzgerald’s subplot starts off with a bombshell but smolders away until nothing quite happens. Sydney Greenstreet gets the unusual opportunity to play a man driven mad by ambition and shortsighted greed; for a performer usually known as the coolest cat in the room, Greenstreet is clearly reveling in the opportunity to mug for the camera. But it’s Lorre who is the most dynamic actor in the film; he too gets to play against type, here headlining as the ostensible romantic lead of Three Strangers. Lorre is eminently charming as Johnny West, just about the only truly sympathetic character the film has, and Lorre plays him like an empathetic and decidedly less psychotic Raskolnikov, a likeable sort who may or may not have simply fallen in with the wrong crowd.

 

I wonder if Three Strangers would fare better on rewatch, since my principal objection to the film seems to be that it wasn’t the film I was expecting. Negulesco is highly competent, and there are some sequences that are undeniably arresting in their tension. Huston, meanwhile, is a gifted storyteller, and he makes his point quite eloquently that human life is a combination of chance and choice. Huston’s message seems to border on nihilism, but one senses also a strong moral compass in the film; the thieves and the philanderers get what’s coming to them, while the innocent get put through the wringer but emerge with a clearer sense of what truly matters in life.

 

It's only a shame that Three Strangers gets really good right at the end, but then I suspect that most audiences will remember that moment, the moment when the film goes from a slice-of-life to a Twilight Zone episode. It’s the kind of poetic justice that Rod Serling adored, and it’s the first film this month that hasn’t seemed to demand a sequel. Perhaps that’s a remarkable achievement in itself – these characters have run their narrative course. We left even The Maltese Falcon wishing for a sequel (and, in the case of Across the Pacific, very nearly got our wish), but Three Strangers wraps up nicely. Moreover, it cautions us to be careful what you wish for; longing for a sequel may not, the film suggests, be in our best interests.

 

Three Strangers is not rated. Directed by Jean Negulesco. Written by John Huston and Howard Koch. Starring Sydney Greenstreet, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Peter Lorre, Joan Lorring, and Alan Napier.

Greenstreet/Lorre: The Mask of Dimitrios (1944)

The Mask of Dimitrios is proof of one indisputable fact about the Golden Age of Hollywood – there’s never too much of a good thing when it comes to Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet. After a few movies this month where the two didn’t have nearly enough screen time together, The Mask of Dimitrios brings us much more of the Greenstreet and Lorre goodness. When they’re on the screen, the film crackles, but its unusual frame narrative structure ends up being more of a tease than a treat.

Mystery writer Cornelius Leyden (Peter Lorre) becomes fascinated with the strange case of master criminal Dimitrios Makropoulos (Zachary Scott), who appears to have washed up dead in Turkey. Looking for inspiration for his next book, Leyden follows the clues into the past, egged on by the shadowy Mr. Peters (Sydney Greenstreet). Leyden begins to learn more about the crimes that shaped Dimitrios even as he begins his own investigation into Mr. Peters, who is following his every move across Europe. 

 

The structure of The Mask of Dimitrios is best described as “John Le Carré’s Citizen Kane,” with a central protagonist digging ever deeper into the world of espionage through the focal lens of one man’s biography. As this protagonist, Lorre is riveting, wrestling between his curiosity and his own innate timidity. In an early scene, a Turkish police colonel tells Leyden that he is not quite what one imagines when picturing a writer, and that’s because of the graceful ease Lorre brings to humanizing this (and every) character. He stoops and mumbles, but he lights up when the pieces start fitting together in his mind. Leyden’s arc throughout the film becomes a kind of bildungsroman in which the artist becomes a hero, and it’s a triumph to see Lorre enact that character, instead of being relegated to playing heavies, goons, and creeps.

 

Throughout the film, Lorre is matched, finally, with Greenstreet. After each extended flashback into the life of Dimitrios, there is inevitably a sequence in which Leyden returns to his hotel for an impromptu reunion with Mr. Peters. Where Lorre is unnerved and guarded, Greenstreet is his usual boisterous self, glad of confidence and disarmingly open-armed. Greenstreet proves himself among Lorre’s best co-stars (if not the outright best), and one senses that the two are enabling each other to reach greater heights than they would individually. Their chemistry is so unique, best summed up in the moment when Leyden says of Mr. Peters, “He’s my friend! Well, no, he’s not my friend, but he’s a nice man!” 

 

As for Dimitrios, though, I have to say I found this character uninspiring. It’s Zachary Scott’s film debut, but Dimitrios is a classic example of “show, don’t tell.” The other characters consistently tell Leyden what an amazing, devious, magnetic personality Dimitrios was, and they overhype the character to the point where no living actor could match that introduction. Moreover, unlike in Citizen Kane, the flashbacks here are often a bit dry, the performances stiff and unengaging. It’s a shame because the interstitial scenes that introduce the flashbacks, with Lorre and Greenstreet or particularly Lorre and Victor Francen, are effervescent, bubbling over with enough personality to fill a one-act play.

 

I will give The Mask of Dimitrios credit for its third-act turn, which I genuinely did not see coming. I should have, certainly, especially having read a few Le Carré novels in my day. Best of all, the developments of the film’s third act force Leyden and Peters even closer, to the point where they’ve almost become co-conspirators in a plot that seems inevitable only in hindsight. One wonders very much what hijinks Leyden and Peters might have found in a sequel, whether the two men might have been bound by friendship rather than circumstance. But, as Mr. Peters says throughout the film, “How little kindness there is in the world today!” The Mask of Dimitrios leaves you wanting more, but if one were to rewatch the film, it would only be to rewatch Peter Lorre in all his squirrelly greatness, emboldened by the magnificent Sydney Greenstreet.

 

The Mask of Dimitrios is not rated. Directed by Jean Negulesco. Written by Frank Gruber. Based on the novel by Eric Ambler. Starring Sydney Greenstreet, Zachary Scott, Faye Emerson, Peter Lorre, and Victor Francen.

Greenstreet/Lorre: Passage to Marseille (1944)

If last week’s Background to Danger was an attempt to recapture the magic of Casablanca, Passage to Marseille is an even more transparent effort to reunite the stars, the director, and the atmosphere of its iconic predecessor. Passage gets nearer to the mark, thanks especially to returning star Humphrey Bogart, though its labyrinthine structure plays a weird and distancing game with its audience.

Passage to Marseille begins with the journalist Manning (John Loder) interviewing Captain Freycinet (Claude Rains) about a Free French outpost in England. Freycinet tells Manning the incredible story of the naval voyage aboard the Ville de Nancy, where he was introduced to the garrison’s infamous gunner, Jean Matrac (Humphrey Bogart). There Matrac relays the strange way and his band (including Peter Lorre, Helmut Dantine, George Tobias, and Philip Dorn) made their way from the Devil’s Island into the service of the French air force. 

 

Passage to Marseille has become notable for its Inception-like plotting, which features a flashback within a flashback within a flashback. It’s evident that the film is an adaptation of a novel, where such narrative devices are commonplace, but in a film it’s a bit disorienting to be continually reminded that what we are seeing is actually just a story being told to one of the characters. Freycinet tells Manning about his first meeting with Matrac, at which time Matrac told him a story about being imprisoned on Devil’s Island, at which time the prisoners told each other the story of Matrac’s arrest. The film spirals ever backwards into history, with four separate timelines; none of it is too confusing, and as narrators go one could do a lot worse than Claude Rains, but it is peculiar to have to wait for nearly half the film to understand why we should care about most of the characters.

 

Fortunately, Bogart’s star power does much of the heavy lifting. The minute we see him, we too are eager to learn more about Matrac, this haunted and driven gunner. Bogart’s performance is clearly meant to emulate Rick Blaine of Casablanca, with his specific brand of morality driving him away from, then into, the Second World War. But there is something too of Fred C. Dobbs from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre in Jean Matrac, particularly in the Devil’s Island sequence where we see Matrac wrestle with his captors, false imprisonment and his own budding madness. As ever, Bogart is electrifying, though the film neuters itself by reminding us that we have already seen that Matrac will escape.

 

While sporting an eyepatch, Claude Rains does his usual Claude Rains thing, all elegance and precision. I was a little surprised to see the film not flash back to the loss of Freycinet’s eye, though Rains weaves it into the understated backstory of the character, treating it not as a handicap but as a welcome challenge to how he can continue to serve France. Among the rest of the cast, Lorre is a stand-out, though perhaps I’m biased. His Marius seems to be Matrac’s deputy, helping first to recruit Matrac in the escape attempt and then aiding him as he leads the other men to freedom. In the Ville de Nancy timeline, Marius is eager to speak for himself and his brothers, while simultaneously deferring to Matrac when he deigns to lift his voice. 

 

Relative to our purposes this month, Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre are once again kept apart for nearly all of the film, though the rampant chemistry between Bogart and Lorre is on full delightful display. Where he stumbled as a Nazi in Background to Danger, Greenstreet is better cast as the martinet Major Duval, who relies solely on his own intuition and who wields respect like a bullwhip. Greenstreet and Lorre only have the one significant scene together, in which Duval’s interrogation precedes Freycinet’s more sympathetic dialogue, and it’s a fine centerpiece for Greenstreet to tell us plenty about Duval. As usual, in this sequence Lorre tells us more about Marius in the moments when he’s not speaking, but one cannot help – especially this month – wanting more, more, more.

 

Director Michael Curtiz, himself of Casablanca, went to great pains to reassemble as much of the magic from that film in Passage to Marseille. So much of the cast returns for this one, right down to a cameo from singer Corinna Mura. (Even Michèle Morgan, in her thankless role as Matrac’s wife, has a Casablanca connection – she screen-tested for the role that inevitably went to Ingrid Bergman after Warner Bros lowballed RKO for a release from her contract.) Between Curtiz’s directorial eye and the musical ear of Max Steiner, who bombards the film with refrains from the French national anthem La Marseillaise, the film’s every impulse seems to invite comparisons with Casablanca – short of thinly remaking the film, as was the wont of the Golden Age of cinema, it seems there was little more that anyone could have done to make this film more like Casablanca. 

 

You don’t need me to tell you, however, that Casablanca needs no remake. It’s cute to watch them try, and a film starring Bogart in his prime is never a misuse of one’s time, but Passage to Marseille is neither quite what it aims to be nor precisely what its audience expects of it. As the old saying goes, though, here’s looking at you – even a vanilla Golden Age war film is still worth a look.

 

Passage to Marseille is not rated. Directed by Michael Curtiz. Written by Casey Robinson and Jack Moffitt. Based on the novel Sans Patrie by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. Starring Humphrey Bogart, Michèle Morgan, Claude Rains, Philip Dorn, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, George Tobias, and Helmut Dantine.

Greenstreet/Lorre: Background to Danger (1943)

For the month of June, we’ll be celebrating the 117th birthday of Peter Lorre – one of my all-time favorite actors – by looking at five of his lesser-known collaborations with fellow character actor Sydney Greenstreet. The two met during Greenstreet’s film debut in The Maltese Falcon (1941) and starred in eight films together (nine, if you count their fun cameo in Hollywood Canteen). Despite being two very different performers, their chemistry was electric, their mannerisms impeccable. When you see their names on a bill together, you know you’re in for a treat.

After The Maltese Falcon, Lorre and Greenstreet were not quite reunited in Casablanca (1942); both give unforgettable performances as the squirrely Ugarte and the voluminous Ferrari, respectively, but the only misstep in an otherwise perfect film is that they never share the screen. (Their presences are so indelible, however, that you’d be forgiven for not noticing until now.) It would not be until Background to Danger in 1943 that the pair inhabited the cinematic frame together, albeit only for one tense sequence. The film is one of a host of Casablanca imitators, unmemorable but not unwatchable.

 

George Raft stars as traveling salesman Joe Barton, secretly a spy for the United States. After meeting the beautiful but doomed Ana Remzi (Osa Massen) on a train to Turkey, Barton comes into possession of secret documents that indicate the Nazis are about to implicate the Soviet Union in a fictitious invasion of Turkey, the better for Germany to take control. Barton is pursued by the plan’s architect, the Nazi Colonel Robinson (Greenstreet), but he’s also caught the attention of two Soviet spies, Nikolai Zaleshoff (Lorre) and his sister Tamara (Brenda Marshall).

 

Background to Danger is surprisingly complex in its plotting, taking its cue perhaps from the similarly suspicious Maltese Falcon, in which no one can be trusted and everyone is lying about something. Here, the MacGuffin is likewise an artifact of deception; there is to be no invasion, but the Germans want Turkey to think there will be. With Greenstreet as provocateur, authoring fiction after fiction to cover his own failings, there is something prescient about the film’s emphasis on “fake news” and its value as a weapon of war. As his Gutman was in The Maltese Falcon, Greenstreet’s Robinson is the only character with all the answers, and his mere presence alone gives you a satisfactory antagonist.

 

One cannot help but feel, however, that Greenstreet is only slightly miscast as the German spymaster. There is nothing German about his performance, neither his accent nor his wardrobe; nor is his very name – Robinson – anything less than stiff upper-lip British. Greenstreet is delightfully villainous, but something in his performance feels held back, as though he’s careful not to have too much fun as a Nazi. Likewise, George Raft seems out of his element as Barton, a role that hinges on the reveal that he’s an American spy. When Barton plays the part of a salesman, there’s never a sense that he’s not in total control of the situation; it’s worth noting that the original novel saw Barton as a forerunner to Cary Grant in North by Northwest, bewildered after an accidental plunge into the world of espionage. (The change was made at Raft’s insistence.) Here, though, it’s hard to see why anyone buys Barton’s “babe in the woods” routine, and when he shifts into spy mode, it’s hard to see Raft as anything but the hardboiled gangsters he played.

 

Perhaps the only casting that really works – at least, of the cast with anything of note to do in the script – is Peter Lorre as the Russian spy Nikolai. There is something stagey about Lorre’s performance here, and I mean that in a good way; Lorre imbues the character with a broad physicality, all stooping hunches and balled fists, such that you can imagine his parts of the film being stage plays. Even when he’s not the focus of attention, Lorre is constantly doing something, clutching his fists to his head or bemoaning his lack of vodka. Of all the times that the film asks you to doubt what you suspect about a character, Lorre is the best at walking that line of uncertainty, and I can’t help but wish Nikolai had been a recurring character in other WWII films.

 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the best scene of the film is the moment when all the spies are in the same room together – Raft, Greenstreet, Lorre, and Marshall. At the top of the film’s third act, all the cards get put on the table, and all the actors get to play off each other like some of the more claustrophobic scenes from The Maltese Falcon. To add to the tension, everyone’s got a gun pointed at each other, but more importantly, it’s one of the most successful moments of shifting alliances and casual deception. Everything clicks in this scene, and the audience ought to be genuinely surprised at where the moment goes. It’s not quite the climax of the film, but everything that follows feels like denouement compared to the energy level of this dynamite sequence.

 

Between the restrictions of the Hays Code and the rah-rah patriotism of the era, there are not many surprises in how the film turns out, and it leads to an ending that is perhaps too overtly cheery to fit with the rest of the film, which tries to be a shadowy tale out of John le Carré’s playbook. Background to Danger is fairly emblematic of the Warner Brothers brand of 1940s war films, with most of its familiar faces flitting in and out. It’s not as good as Casablanca – but, then again, few films are.

 

Background to Danger is not rated. Directed by Raoul Walsh. Written by W.R. Burnett. Based on the novel Uncommon Danger by Eric Ambler. Starring George Raft, Brenda Marshall, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Osa Massen, and Turhan Bey.

Monster March: Invisible Agent (1942)

Is the Invisible Man series the franchise without a clue? Is it even a franchise at all? Is it fair to consider this a Universal Monsters series? The answer to all three questions is, I think, “Yes.” If we’re thinking about the Universal Classic Monsters as the first cinematic universe, The Invisible Man would be akin to an Iron Man franchise in which Tony Stark’s brother gives the suit away, while an unrelated inventor makes an iron suit, before Tony’s grandson builds his own suit. (Next week, to push the analogy, an entirely unrelated Stark is given the suit by another disconnected inventor.) Can you hinge a franchise on iconography alone?

Frank Griffin (Jon Hall) finds his print shop invaded by Nazis and Japanese agents (Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Peter Lorre) who demand that he turn over the secret formula for invisibility devised by his grandfather, the original Invisible Man. Instead, Frank escapes and signs over the formula to the U.S. government after Pearl Harbor, on one condition – that only Frank be permitted to use the invisibility serum. Frank parachutes into Germany to meet with a German spy (Ilona Massey), who promises she can get Frank a book of German operatives.

 

Maybe I’m just a sucker for (no pun intended) transparently propagandistic WWII films, but there is something infectiously gee-whiz about an invisible American parachuting behind enemy lines to bust up the Axis. In short, I really enjoyed Invisible Agent more than I thought I would, especially given the mileage-may-vary quality of these later Universal Monsters movies. But this movie ticks a lot of boxes for me, almost like an invisible Rocketeer – which readers of this blog should know is a major gold star in my book. There are, for me, few cinematic pleasures more pure than seeing an enthusiastically patriotic American get the better of Nazis who end up defeating themselves through their own hubris. It’s almost like Captain America in Casablanca.

 

As the eponymous invisible agent, Jon Hall is square-jawed and serviceable, the kind of newsreel hero you really don’t see any more. As an Invisible Man, however, Frank Griffin isn’t any sort of monstrous menace; there is no danger that his serum will drive him mad, brushed away by his claim that only he knows the potency of the formula. This deck-clearing moment allows Invisible Agent to be something closer to The Invisible Woman than The Invisible Man, opening the door for this Griffin to slapstick his way through Nazi Germany. He douses goons in hollandaise and sets his own Reichstag fire by igniting the curtains in Nazi HQ. It’s played for laughs and thrills, but there is rarely any danger to or from our invisible agent. 

 

Even his “appearance,” doused in cold cream rather than swathed in bandages, elicits a hearty chuckle. I’ve been repeatedly impressed by the special effects in these Invisible Man movies, proving that they are almost more the star of the franchise than any invisible protagonist him-or-herself. The cold cream gag works, both as a punchline and as a screen trick to see the unseeable, but I was more taken by the sequence directly before, in which Frank Griffin lathers up in the bathtub. We can see his hands covered in soap, and his legs come into view as he scrubs them – truly effective stuff, even if the DVD transfer makes the seams a bit visible. The aforementioned parachute sequence, too, is fairly incredible, as Griffin disrobes mid-air, dropping his clothes as he drops out of sight. 

 

Invisible Agent truly stands out for its villains, though, played by Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Peter Lorre – two performers who, let’s be honest, are so much better than the fourth Invisible Man film ought to deserve. I’ve been lukewarm on Hardwicke in The Invisible Man Returns and The Ghost of Frankenstein, but those films didn’t quite give him much to do. As Conrad Stauffer, though, Hardwicke sinks his teeth into the clipped disdain and opportunistic deception of a top-ranking Nazi. The performance is an exercise in restraint – less is more – and Hardwicke conjures up the image of a screen villain who’d be just as comfortable in the heightened reality of an Indiana Jones film. Likewise for Peter Lorre, one of my all-time favorite actors. By 1942, Lorre had carved out an odd niche for himself playing Japanese characters, particularly the detective Mr. Moto in an eight-film series. Lorre plays Baron Ikito without the aid of any discomfiting yellowface makeup, though one wonders why this Japanese villain has an Austrian accent. Still, Lorre is at his creepy best in a role that leans into the icky stereotypes of the Japanese as sadistic torturers, and he sends a real chill up your spine in the moments before he erupts into shocking violence.

 

Invisible Agent feels like a one-off in a franchise of one-offs, never quite coming to the level of The Invisible Man and its frantic mad monster. At the same time, though, it never quite feels as though it needs to meet the high bar set by Claude Rains. Instead it’s a flag-waving model of its time, taking the concept of a Universal Classic Monster and doing something sideways with it – and you know I’m always keen on mash-ups and genre-bending. I liked it better than I thought I would, and it’s only too bad that we didn’t get more like this – can you imagine Wolf Man of Berlin or Frankenstein vs. The Axis? (Sidebar: maybe that’s why God invented comic books; cf. The Creature Commandos, etc.)

 

The Invisible Agent is not rated. Directed by Edwin L. Marin. Written by Curtis Siodmak. Starring Jon Hall, Ilona Massey, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Peter Lorre, and J. Edward Bromberg. 

Tune in tomorrow for Franken-Friday, with Son of Frankenstein (1939) starring Boris Karloff, Basil Rathbone, and Bela Lugosi.

Next week for See-Thru Thursday, we’ll see – or not, as the case may be – The Invisible Man’s Revenge (1944), starring Jon Hall. But for bonus invisible shenanigans, Silly Sunday revisits the franchise for Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951), starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, and Arthur Franz.

Monday at the Movies - April 1, 2013

Welcome to this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  Even though it's April Fool's Day, no joke - this is a movie that could be reviewed in a single word:  “perfect.”  (Don’t worry, you’ll get the other 249, as well!)

The Maltese Falcon (1941) – As well as a directorial debut and a book-to-screen adaptation, The Maltese Falcon is the curious case of the remake that’s better than the original (is it the only one?).  Director John Huston takes the Dashiell Hammett book of the same name and films it virtually word-for-word, casting Humphrey Bogart in a star-making role as private eye Sam Spade.  It’s your classic MacGuffin film, where the object of pursuit is less important than the characters who pursue it, and here The Maltese Falcon shines with an amazingly engaging set of protagonists and antagonists who are all in it for themselves – even if it means double-crossing each other to get there.  Spade gets embroiled in a search for the fabled “Black Bird,” though he’s not sure who really wants it or why; in hot pursuit of the jeweled statue, Spade becomes embroiled in a sundry cast of characters including a charismatic pathological liar (Mary Astor), an effete but well-mannered criminal (Peter Lorre), and a garrulous gentleman (Sydney Greenstreet) whose vocabulary is matched only by his girth.  The Maltese Falcon is perfect on a number of levels – perfect cast, perfect direction (which practically reinvents noir before your eyes), perfect script that wastes not a single shot in relentless pursuit of the plot.  Huston has made something really remarkable film here, almost the noir version of Seinfeld, in which essentially nothing happens while four ostensible allies scramble over each other to come out on top.  On first watch, the pursuit is all; on second watch, you’ll be able to appreciate the performances now that you know who’s after what at which point.  On third watch?  You’ll be saying the dialogue along with them.  The Maltese Falcon is that perfect crystallization of earnestness and infectiousness, a movie instantly rewatchable time and again.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

Monday at the Movies - October 29, 2012

Welcome to Week Thirty-Nine of “Monday at the Movies.”  With Halloween coming up this week, here are a few movies that suit the season.

Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) – Directed by Frank Capra (of It’s a Wonderful Life fame), Arsenic and Old Lace is to Halloween what Die Hard is to Christmas – set on the night in question but with little to do with the actual holiday.  Instead, the film flies off on its own fantastic plot, in which the holiday decorations are only incidental.  Here, newlywed Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) finds his honeymoon plans deterred when he learns his aunts have a dead body in the window seat; throw in his homicidal brother Jonathan (Raymond Massey, disguised as Boris Karloff), another brother who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt, and a drunken Doctor Einstein (personal favorite Peter Lorre), and it’s madcap mania as only the Forties could provide.  Though the plot sounds grim, Arsenic and Old Lace is fantastically funny and is easily one of my favorite movies of all time.  Grant is at his slapstick best, chewing the scenery and pacing frenetically without being “too cool for the room.”  Massey is menacing within the boundaries of a comedy film, and Lorre is as always a scene-stealer of the highest order.  In fact, as with any great film, the supporting cast here is exceptionally strong, with no one performance falling below the bar of excellence set by the film.  The standout scene here is the one in which Jonathan and his aunts haggle over which has killed more people:  Aunts Abby and Martha agree that they’ve killed twelve people, while Jonathan insists he has thirteen kills to his name.  In any other movie, it’d be a dark and dismal moment, but in Arsenic and Old Lace it’s unbelievably hysterical, one in two-hour-long line of memorable scenes.  Now if someone could get on that remake with Robert Downey, Jr. I’ve been planning.

The Shining (1980) – Out of the fog and into the smog, The Shining is a more traditional choice for All Hallow’s Eve.  It’s Stanley Kubrick’s spookiest flick, loosely adapted from the Stephen King novel of the same name.  Whether you think the movie is about Native American genocide or how Kubrick faked the moon landing or if it’s just a story about a guy who goes nuts with his family in the mountains, The Shining is damned creepy.  Jack Nicholson stars as Jack Torrance, new caretaker of the Overlook Hotel during the off-season; slowly but inexorably, Jack is driven mad by the winter weather, the badgering of his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and the interference of potentially supernatural elements.  I first saw the film when I was too young to appreciate it, mistaking the film’s slow-burn approach to horror for sluggish, dry monotony.  As usually works for me, watching it with a crowd changed my perspective on the film, allowing me to savor the unsettling elements of the film and even appreciate the significant changes Kubrick made to the source material.  Nicholson’s performance is classic id, whose insane and wild-eyed mugging for the camera immortalized the “Here’s Johnny!” refrain.  Child actor Danny Lloyd, too, is a fine foil for Nicholson; his contemplative psychic ability is a pitch-perfect counterpoint to Nicholson’s agitated energy without ever allowing the audience to relax. It may not be the best Stephen King movie, but it’s one of Kubrick’s more enjoyable films.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!