Thriller from director Fritz Lang about a British sharpshooter (a surprisingly good Walter Pidgeon) who is captured by the Nazis just as he is about to shoot Hitler. He had the son-of-a-bitch in his crosshairs and was about to pull the trigger when he's discovered! His interrogator (the always perfect George Sanders, speaking fluent German!) badgers, beats, and tortures him but still cannot get a confession. Before Sanders can stage a tragic "accident", Pidgeon manages to escape to London. But the bad guys are on his tail, lurking behind every foggy corner. He enlists the help of a cockney tart (the wonderful as always Joan Bennett...why did this woman never win an Academy Award?) to get him out of England and off the map.
Fritz Lang's evocation of spies and international mischief (Spione) and the criminal world (M) is beautifully rendered in this marvelous film (I may be alone in preferring his American work to the German stuff). Lang is well known for the visual elegance he brings to his films, and this one is no exception. You can see his aesthetic in every frame of this movie. What people don't often give him credit for is his ability with actors. The performances are great in this, particularly Bennett and Sanders. True, they are great actors...but they are better here than their usual excellent...and in roles that in the hands of lesser actors can fall into cliche territory (a whore with a heart of gold and a Nazi). Plus, an angelic Roddy MacDowell in his American film debut, and John Carradine as a Gestapo assassin (Lang and his cameraman Arthur Miller have a field day with Carradine's cadaver-like features). The three leads all seem like they're in a tightening vice. A major wartime film...think Casablanca, but take out that film's romance, humor, and insouciance, and add dread and nihilism.
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