Director: Herman Shumlin
Year: 1945
Rating: 7.0
This was Lauren Bacall's follow up to her wonderful
debut in To Have and Have Not the previous year in 1944. In To Have and Have
Not of course she began her relationship with the much older Bogart and a
series of very good films with him - The Big Sleep, Dark Passage and Key
Largo. Her chemistry with Bogart is so good that it covers to a large degree
Bacall's lack of acting experience at this point in her career. She had basically
been seen by Howard Hawks on a magazine cover and he called her in to test
for To Have. Instant stardom.
In Confidential Agent she co-stars with the great romantic French star Charles
Boyer, but it isn't Bogart and all her acting flaws are on full display.
And there are plenty of them. It doesn't help that she is terribly miscast
as the daughter of an English Lord with a Brooklyn accent that could crack
an egg. Though her character softens near the end, she is as brittle and
unlikable as a broken tooth. And photographed at times that accentuates her
longish nose and large mouth. She hated her performance when she saw the
film and thought it might destroy her career, but fortunately the next film
The Big Sleep came to her rescue. Bacall was to constantly battle with Warner
Brother's about the films they chose for her until she finally left.
This film is based on a Graham Greene novel of the same title and which I
have read. It follows the book surprisingly closely. On many levels this
is a terrific film - some great acting by the other co-stars, terrific noir
like photography from James Wong Howe, an excellent score from Franz Waxman
and a good dollop of suspense that plays out slowly with some great individual
scenes. The director Herman Shumlin was more a theatrical director and only
directed one other film, the excellent Watch on the Rhine in 1943.
It seems a bit odd that in 1945 after the war was over that they make a film
about the Spanish Civil War which must have felt very far in the past. Boyer
is an agent of the Spanish Republic (the good guys) and comes to London to
try and negotiate a coal deal with English mine owners. He is beset from
the opposition who want to stop him, some English dunderheads, betrayals
all around him and this flighty obnoxious girl he meets after he disembarks
from the boat. He is also perhaps the most passive inept agent one could
assign to this task. It clearly has a Hitchcockian air about it from his
Foreign Correspondent, 39 Steps period but it never quite clicks on all cylinders.
Like Hitchcock, it has terrific roles for the other players. It is really
these other actors who keep this film alive and at times mesmerizing. Peter
Lorre in sniveling mode, Dan Seymour as a Hindi observationist, George Zucco
as a policeman and then in particular two great performances from Wanda Hendrix
in her debut as a 14 year old maid at the hotel who is creepy and smitten
at the same time and best is the Greek actress Katina Paxinou as the evil
landlady who could scare a ghost on Halloween.
