By David in TN
Friday, November 29, 2019 at 1:35:00 A.M. EST
TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:15 a.m. and 10 a.m. ET is The Mask of Dimitrios (1944). It features Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Faye Emerson, Zachary Scott, Steven Geray, Kurt Katch, and Victor Francen, directed by Jean Negulesco.
A writer tries to discover the life of a dead crook. Greenstreet and Lorre are paired again.
Film Noir Guide: “While vacationing in Istanbul in 1938, a Dutch mystery writer (Lorre) becomes embroiled in a real-life mystery. When a Turkish chief of police (Katch), a wannabe mystery writer, brags to Lorre that an archcriminal has been found floating in the Bospherus, the intrigued writer asks to see the body. At the morgue, Katch tells the writer about how the criminal (Scott, in his film debut) viciously murdered a merchant fifteen years earlier and fled Turkey, leaving his partner to face the hangman. Fascinated, Lorre decides to investigate and travels to Scott’s old haunts (Athens, Sofie, Geneva and Paris), learning about Scott’s involvement in extortion, murder, espionage, and political assassination.
“Along the way, Lorre encounters a mysterious fat man (Greenstreet), who involves him in a daring blackmail scheme.
“Emerson plays the woman who makes the mistake of falling in love with Scott; Geray is a Yugoslav government employee, suckered by Scott into spying against his country; and Francen is the retired ‘employer of spy labor.’”
“This has it all—fine acting, a droll script, an impressive visual style and a satisfying ending. Don’t miss it.”
TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:15 and 10 an ET is Jacques Tourneur's Berlin Express (1948) featuring Robert Ryan, Merle Oberon, Charles Korvin, Paul Lukas, and Charles McGraw.
ReplyDeleteFilm Noir Guide: "An important West German diplomat (Lukas) on his way to present a plan for the unification of Germany, is kidnapped by a group of postwar Nazis as he boards an American troop train in Frankfurt. Ryan, a U.S. Agriculture Department employee, and three other passengers (an Englishman, a Frenchman, and a Russian soldier) join the diplomat's secretary (Oberon) in the search for her missing boss. Ryan does a good job as an American who isn't crazy about Germans but is ripe for an attitude adjustment (especially if it's administered by the delectable Oberon). Mostly unexciting, Express contains many sobering shots of the bombed-out ruins in Frankfurt and Berlin. Filmed during the earliest stages of the Cold War, the moral of the story is, 'Can't we all just get along?'"