Click here to buy posters!
1936, 83 MINS, UK
CAST:
(Gaumont-British)
Dvds | Videos
|
Click here to buy posters!
1936, 83 MINS, UK
CAST:
(Gaumont-British)
|
|
Secret Agent dallies much on the way but rates
as good spy entertainment, suave story
telling, and, in one particular case, brilliant
characterization. This is the role of the
Mexican hired killer as played by Peter Lorre.
Director Alfred Hitchcock has done well at
lending the tale's grim theme [from the play
by Campbell Dixon, based on the novel
Ashenden by W. Somerset Maugham] with
deftly fashioned humour, appropriate romantic
interplay and some swell outdoor photography.
More critical element will find the part of
Madeleine Carroll somewhat straining
credulity. The film has her philandering at
the game of espionage and out of sheer ineptitude pulling one of the major coups of the
service. Likewise unconvincing is the overly
sensitive conduct in which her co-spy (John Gielgud) indulges once he is bitten by love.
Production maintains an easy-going pace almost throughout, with most of the action cast
against the background of the Swiss Alps.
Gielgud is assigned to Switzerland to prevent
a German spy from getting back into pro-German territory. To do the actual killing,
Lorre, a Mexican with a juvenile sense of fun
but a boundless enthusiasm for playing the
knife upon humans, is sent along. Arriving on
the scene, Gielgud finds that Carroll had
been matched with him for the job, with the
pair to pose as man and wife.
yul brynner | christopher plummer | romy schneider
dvds | videos yul brynner | christopher plummer | romy schneider
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