This film from Carol Reed feels as if it was one of Hitchcock's pre-war
films involving the Nazis - that never actually mentions the Nazis or Germany.
That would be The Lady Vanishes, The 39 Steps and Foreign Correspondent.
All favorites of mine. The difference being by the time of Night Train to
Munich the war had already begun so there was no political reason to be so
careful not to offend. So it begins with Hitler pounding on maps of Sudetenland,
Austria and Czechoslovakia as images of Nazis marching cross the screen.
But the film's comparisons to those Hitchcock films - in particular Lady
Vanishes and 39 Steps - are hard to escape. For one thing the scriptwriters
of The Lady Vanishes - Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, two very prominent
figures in English cinema - wrote this one as well and it has similarities
- not so much in plot really but in mood and style. In its low-key understated
portrayal of British courage and patriotism. None of the swagger of the Nazis
- just men and women doing what had to be done. No Nazi salutes and hails
to the Fatherland but a quiet love for their country and a willingness to
die for it with a cheerio on their lips. Amateurs fighting against trained
professionals with no morals. Other British films like Pimpernel Smith, Man
Hunt and the books of Eric Ambler fall into this same territory of an amateur
getting involved with fighting tyranny in some small way.
Not that the character Rex Harrison plays is a total amateur as he works
for British intel but he is far from a professional. A professional amateur
perhaps. Harrison is an easy actor to admire but a hard one to feel much
affection for. He always comes across as slightly pompous, smug and irascible.
His love for others never goes far beyond himself. But he can be fascinating
to watch. When a Czech scientist and his daughter are kidnapped by Nazi agents
right under his nose in England, he decides to take leave and get them back.
England is not yet at war with Germany but everyone knows it is coming as
soon as they invade Poland - in self-defense as one of the Germans says.
The daughter is played by Margaret Lockwood - the woman in The Lady Vanishes,
one of England's most popular actresses whose popularity never really made
it to America and at the time Carol Reed's lover.
So Dickie Randall (Harrison) simply goes to Berlin, puts on an officer's
uniform, walks into HQ and talks the German military brass into thinking
he is some bigwig to do with engineering. It is a lovely performance with
its fast-talking script. He convinces them that he can persuade the scientist
to work with them because he had an affair with the daughter years ago in
Prague. His plan is to get them out of the hotel and to a waiting plane -
but it all goes off the tracks. Instead under the steely eye of a Gestapo
agent played by Paul Henreid - credited at the time as Paul von Henried -
he wisely dropped the von when the USA went to war. Instead, they have to
board a train to Munich - and who do they run into but the wonderful Charters
and Caldicott. The British cricket loving characters from The Lady
Vanishes played by Basil Radford and Naughton Wayne. Playing the same characters
and on a train again.
The Lady Vanishes had made them so popular that they were teamed up in multiple
films and on the radio. The British loved their Britishness. Their love for
cricket, their friendship, their love of England, their middle class status.
They become very much involved in the film and unlike in The Lady Vanishes
where they, like England at the time, wanted to stay out of the difficulties
until they had no choice - here as soon as they see what is up put their
lives at risk. For country but also because Dickie was a classmate and a
very fine Bowler in cricket for the amateurs or as they termed it back then,
The Gentleman. When they are informed that England is now at war with Germany
the look on their faces represented England - shock but accepting and resilient
- and then made comedic when Charters realizes he will never get back the
golf clubs he left in Berlin. The film does not have the warm wit and crackle
of the Hitchcock films - mainly because there is no chemistry between Harrison
and Lockwood - believing that they will fall in love seems highly improbable
but it is a terrific suspenseful film and made at a time when films like
this lifted the spirits of a country being bombed relentlessly by the enemy.
