With so many terrific Warners WW2 melodramas - EDGE OF DARKNESS, WATCH ON THE RHINE, CLOAK & DAGGER, OBJECTIVE BURMA, it's alarming to come upon this piece of unconvincing exhortation.
Flynn is terrible as the escaped murderer who middle aged family man detective Lukas has no trouble tracking down and over coming Our hero is never plausible convincing the Sureté Inspector that he should replace the wanted saboteur, for whom the Gestapo have taken a hundred hostages.
We expect it to play better because it has all those great production values we knee jerk to admiration on - brassy score, wipe dissolves and detailed art direction - dipping bread in wine, two wire electrics, signs in French and studio built, sandbagged plaster building streets but along with this we get totally phony dialogue - "What heart? That cold lump you feel in your chest is fear."
Curious the way it shows a craven, corrupt France with the Garde Mobile (the admirable James Flavin is unrecognizable) subservient to the Germans and villagers plotting to denounce an innocent man. Put this one alongside CASABLANCA and PASSAGE TO MARSEILLE which the French authorities banned at the end of the war.
Flynn is terrible as the escaped murderer who middle aged family man detective Lukas has no trouble tracking down and over coming Our hero is never plausible convincing the Sureté Inspector that he should replace the wanted saboteur, for whom the Gestapo have taken a hundred hostages.
We expect it to play better because it has all those great production values we knee jerk to admiration on - brassy score, wipe dissolves and detailed art direction - dipping bread in wine, two wire electrics, signs in French and studio built, sandbagged plaster building streets but along with this we get totally phony dialogue - "What heart? That cold lump you feel in your chest is fear."
Curious the way it shows a craven, corrupt France with the Garde Mobile (the admirable James Flavin is unrecognizable) subservient to the Germans and villagers plotting to denounce an innocent man. Put this one alongside CASABLANCA and PASSAGE TO MARSEILLE which the French authorities banned at the end of the war.