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Not for nothing is Joseph L. Mankiewicz a student of Lubitsch, thus the very dry comedy of "an incredible lapse of security." Neutral Turkey during the war, a minister's gala reception is indicative of zones uneasily shared, the band plays "Heart of Oak" for the British ambassador (Walter Hampden) after the German consul (John Wengraf) is finished enduring Wagner. "A sordid, unrewarding business," espionage, perhaps not so unrewarding to the valet (James Mason) willing to sell Allied strategies to the Reich. His dream image is a white-suited gentleman on a balcony in Rio, his dream conquest is the widowed countess (Danielle Darrieux) he once worked for. Penniless since leaving Warsaw ("Bombs were falling. I felt I was in the way"), she warms to the tacit proposition of becoming a traitor's mistress, after a slap they're ready to talk business. The Nazi attaché (Oskar Karlweis) can't quite believe the top-secret microfilms in his possession, the counterintelligence agent (Michael Rennie) can't quite figure out the identity of the safecracker working in the same embassy. "Please don't be diplomatic for just a moment." Class divides and code names, the cultivated and the counterfeit, suspense and wit in continuous play. A certain "Cicero," a Mason master class in subtlety and groundwork for Losey's The Servant. "Nobody ever found anybody in Istanbul," a line for Robbe-Grillet. The clicking heels that betray the Prussian in Swiss clothing, the suave burglary foiled by a mousy cleaning lady's malfunctioning vacuum cleaner. The house of cards collapses to bitter laughter and fluttering bills à la Huston. "And that's one thing I've learned from the British, the importance of an exterior." Reed's The Man Between is something of an immediate response, and Mankiewicz has his own companion piece in The Quiet American. With Herbert Berghof, Ben Astar, Konstantin Shayne, Roger Plowden, Michael Pate, Lawrence Dobkin, Richard Loo, and Ivan Triesault. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |