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You can see in the dark, but I've got one thing
I wish Paul Henreid had been allowed to play more villains. I haven't checked his filmography, but I suspect Victor Laszlo froze him into rectitude; at least, I've never heard much about his complex, darkly variable screen persona. But I caught Night Train to Munich (1940) on TCM earlier tonight, and he's easily the most compelling character in the script: the Nazi agent genuinely taken with the woman whose trust he's been assigned to gain in order to get to her father (the MacGuffin), which hasn't stopped him from betraying her once and won't again, if that's what he's told to do. He doesn't have a chance, of course. He's up against Rex Harrison's harlequinade of a British agent, who first doubles him and then effectively cuts him out of his own life—passes himself off as a higher-ranking officer, fabricates an entire romantic history with the girl that appears to take precedence over Henreid's unspoken, not fully acknowledged claim.1 His ending is ambiguous; he might be choosing to let his prey go, or he might be so utterly demoralized, he doesn't care if they get away. But I found myself watching him with far more attention than I ever did in Casablanca (1942), and I have no idea if the actor ever got a role with the slightest ambiguity again.
Otherwise the film is a quite-good-but-lesser: Carol Reed had not yet made Odd Man Out (1947), The Fallen Idol (1948), or The Third Man (1949); Margaret Lockwood was still five years off from The Wicked Lady (1945) and had gotten more to do in The Lady Vanishes (1938); Gilliat and Launder had the same film to their credit and Millions Like Us (1943), Green for Danger (1946), The Belles of St. Trinian's (1954) still to come. See the footnote for Rex Harrison, but I prefer him in Major Barbara (1941) or The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1946). Also I think as a whole the movie suffers from what![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
papersky identified as the phony war problem: it's not real yet. The Nazis are nasty, but nothing that a clever Englishman with a gun and a plan can't handle.2 There's always time for a one-liner or a deadpan comeback. It's not full-out comedy, but it's not quite taking place in history as we know it somehow; and this diminishes its particular species of fizzy, fast-paced thriller, which might otherwise have held up as crackingly as some of its dialogue. I should be able to extend this argument, but I think my brain just quit.
Basically, I appreciate that Criterion has put Night Train to Munich out on DVD, but all things considered I'd still rather have The October Man (1947). I'm glad to have Paul Henreid, though.
1. I am fascinated by Harrison in this film: a seducer every second, but performing it with a fourth-wall wink, a kind of archly obvious dare, as if admitting that he can't really be that irresistible, but would it be so terrible just to give it a try? Men as well as women; he bluffs his way into a cadre of German officers with the same kind of sizing-up charm, the same conspiratorial come-on-and-try-me. It is unclear whether it works on Margaret Lockwood's Anna: they go through the motions of romance in public, but we don't ever really see her melt to him. She sums him up in the bedroom where they are pretending to renew their old affair, really plotting their escape with her father from Berlin: "You know, if a woman ever loved you as you love yourself, it would be one of the romances of history."
2. For God's sake, they're nothing Charters and Caldicott can't handle. (The career-defining creations of Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, a pair of middle-aged, madly cricket-fancying clubmen with about eight insular but well-intentioned brain cells between them; they always do the right thing, but only if they don't get distracted by the Ashes first.) I appreciated that the film's Germans are not monolithic. There's a petty official whose purpose in the script is to threaten to report a passerby for making unfavorable remarks about the new Germany and then to be fooled by the disguised Harrison's high-handed SS drag, but in between these two incidents we hear him muttering to himself, "This is a fine country to live in . . . This is a fine country to live in . . . This is a bloody awful country to live in." I was expecting that as little as I was expecting a film made in 1940 to depict a concentration camp, even a deeply sanitized one by the standards of today's knowledge. But with the exception of Henreid's Karl and his contact in Britain, all the Nazis we see are either ranting monsters, faceless soldiers, or figures of fun, and in the end—possibly because they can be fooled by a stiff upper lip, a tightly screwed-in monocle, and a judicious dose of brazen cheek—it's the impression of the latter that seems to remain. I want that, I'll watch To Be or Not to Be (1942) or The Great Dictator (1940). Those are films that know the darkness under their smiles.
Otherwise the film is a quite-good-but-lesser: Carol Reed had not yet made Odd Man Out (1947), The Fallen Idol (1948), or The Third Man (1949); Margaret Lockwood was still five years off from The Wicked Lady (1945) and had gotten more to do in The Lady Vanishes (1938); Gilliat and Launder had the same film to their credit and Millions Like Us (1943), Green for Danger (1946), The Belles of St. Trinian's (1954) still to come. See the footnote for Rex Harrison, but I prefer him in Major Barbara (1941) or The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1946). Also I think as a whole the movie suffers from what
papersky identified as the phony war problem: it's not real yet. The Nazis are nasty, but nothing that a clever Englishman with a gun and a plan can't handle.2 There's always time for a one-liner or a deadpan comeback. It's not full-out comedy, but it's not quite taking place in history as we know it somehow; and this diminishes its particular species of fizzy, fast-paced thriller, which might otherwise have held up as crackingly as some of its dialogue. I should be able to extend this argument, but I think my brain just quit.Basically, I appreciate that Criterion has put Night Train to Munich out on DVD, but all things considered I'd still rather have The October Man (1947). I'm glad to have Paul Henreid, though.
1. I am fascinated by Harrison in this film: a seducer every second, but performing it with a fourth-wall wink, a kind of archly obvious dare, as if admitting that he can't really be that irresistible, but would it be so terrible just to give it a try? Men as well as women; he bluffs his way into a cadre of German officers with the same kind of sizing-up charm, the same conspiratorial come-on-and-try-me. It is unclear whether it works on Margaret Lockwood's Anna: they go through the motions of romance in public, but we don't ever really see her melt to him. She sums him up in the bedroom where they are pretending to renew their old affair, really plotting their escape with her father from Berlin: "You know, if a woman ever loved you as you love yourself, it would be one of the romances of history."
2. For God's sake, they're nothing Charters and Caldicott can't handle. (The career-defining creations of Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, a pair of middle-aged, madly cricket-fancying clubmen with about eight insular but well-intentioned brain cells between them; they always do the right thing, but only if they don't get distracted by the Ashes first.) I appreciated that the film's Germans are not monolithic. There's a petty official whose purpose in the script is to threaten to report a passerby for making unfavorable remarks about the new Germany and then to be fooled by the disguised Harrison's high-handed SS drag, but in between these two incidents we hear him muttering to himself, "This is a fine country to live in . . . This is a fine country to live in . . . This is a bloody awful country to live in." I was expecting that as little as I was expecting a film made in 1940 to depict a concentration camp, even a deeply sanitized one by the standards of today's knowledge. But with the exception of Henreid's Karl and his contact in Britain, all the Nazis we see are either ranting monsters, faceless soldiers, or figures of fun, and in the end—possibly because they can be fooled by a stiff upper lip, a tightly screwed-in monocle, and a judicious dose of brazen cheek—it's the impression of the latter that seems to remain. I want that, I'll watch To Be or Not to Be (1942) or The Great Dictator (1940). Those are films that know the darkness under their smiles.
no subject
Poem up for you btw.
no subject
There is some art that survives that kind of historical blindsight, though, and some that doesn't. Night Train to Munich might have held up better if it were a stronger film overall, but really, Paul Henreid—here still credited as Paul von Hernreid in a brave but doomed attempt to preserve as many of his real names as possible—is the reason I'm going to remember it. I am charmed by Charters and Caldicott, but I'm not sure they belonged in this particular story.
Poem up for you btw.
And a charged, dancing poem it is, too.