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The Berchtesgaden woods are out of Die Nibelungen, the ideal opening for a severe fable. In a monumental précis about intent and deed and (in)action and consequence, Fritz Lang places Hitler before the telescopic rifle of the blithe British big-game hunter (Walter Pidgeon) who's enjoying a "sporting stalk": To prove the athlete's skill, he aims the empty gun and pulls the trigger, then gets jumped by a sentry after putting a bullet in the chamber. No need to kill the prey once victory is established, says the fastidious prisoner, sheer "decadence" to the Nazi officer (George Sanders) who wants a spy's confession. Escape, sail back home with the help of the cabin boy (Roddy McDowall), foggy London might as well be the Berlin of Dr. Mabuse. His doppelgänger is the "walking corpse" (John Carradine) with blade concealed in cane, the Cockney streetwalker (Joan Bennett) is his only ally. "Today, Europe. Tomorrow, the world." A repudiation of neutrality in the face of the beast, a furious theorem endowed with a hundred visceral details. (One such detail: The tracks left on an elegant carpet by the boots of a tortured man as he's dragged from one room to another.) The path from prewar dandy to RAF paratrooper has its subterranean detours, deep in the subway tunnel is a scuffle superbly staged with darkness, silence, and the sudden sizzle of electrified tracks (cf. While the City Sleeps).The heroine is last glimpsed before the glowing monocle in a living-room interrogation, the brooch in her bonnet is a silver arrow that finds its way back to the hero barricaded in a cavern. "May you never lodge it in the wrong heart." To Lang patriotism in the end is little more than sanctioned vengeance, all part of the circle of "unconscious assassins" unleashed by and for war. With Ludwig Stössel, Frederick Worlock, Heather Thatcher, and Roger Imhof. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |