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Reviews
The Falcon in Hollywood (1944)
An RKO genre masterpiece
Had to give this film 10 stars as , although only
an RKO detective series B picture , it is a gem of it's type.
Tom Conway as the Falcon is charming as always. Veda Ann
Borg , in a rare featured role , is delightful as his cabbie
side-kick ( and looking adorable 5 years after major
facial reconstruction following an auto crash ).
A young and beautiful Barbara Hale ( of later Perry
Mason fame ) also co-stars . Half of the lines of
film producer Dwyer ( played by Martin Abbot )
are quotes from Shakespeare .
The opening features the Hollywood Turf Club racetrack
and many of the scenes are set on the RKO backlot ( where
the murder takes place ) . There are also some fascinating
forties Hollywood street scenes and a sequence at the Los Angeles
Coliseum ( opened in 1923 ).
The lighting and cinematography are exceptional , the dialogue clever
and the pacing excellent. A beautifully realized studio era genre film .
Enemy of the Reich: The Noor Inayat Khan Story (2014)
Well intended but , unfortunately , superficial and inaccurate in details large and small throughout . . .
Although I appreciate this tribute to a unique , fascinating and heroic woman , the producers do not seem to have researched her story at all thoroughly . Examples abound . 1. The film indicates that until shortly before her capture she had avoided the Suresnes neighborhood in which she had grown up and would be recognized. In fact she visited the area regularly and transmitted frequently from a house there , convinced that no one in her old neighborhood would betray her despite that part of suburban Paris being heavily occupied by Germans and her childhood home taken over as a barracks. 2. Ernst Vogt who interrogated Noor while imprisoned at 84 Avenue Foch is portrayed as a stereoyped overweight arrogant cold-blooded Nazi type . When biographer Jean Overton Fuller met with him after the war she describes him as tall and extremely thin , and her account and other reliable sources indicate that for a German interrogator his relations with prisoners were unusually lacking in brutality and almost amiable - Vogt ( a Swiss-German civilian and not a member of the Nazi Party ) says that he had to remind Noor not to forget that he was her enemy and goes on to describe her as possibly the best human being he had met in his life ( he was imprisoned for 5 years by several countries before being cleared of all war crimes charges . ) 3. Noor's rooftop escape attempt at Avenue Foch has been described in considerable detail by John Starr , who participated in it. When Jean Fuller visited the site she found that a window Starr recounts being broken to enter a neighboring building had still not been repaired. She also found the remains of papers he had stashed in a flower pot. Enemy of the Reich portrays the escape incident in a routine , perfunctory manner suggesting little awareness of the actual story ( and there should be only 3 bars on the vents by which they climbed to the roof - a minor detail , but well documented so why not get it right ) . Not to belabor the subject , I thank the producers for this tribute to the immortal Noor-un-Nissa Inayat Khan , a.k.a. Nora Baker , Jeanne-Marie Renier & Madeleine, but wish they had found it possible to research and convey her story with greater depth and accuracy .