Author Eric Ambler once again treads into the morally complex and complicated world of a disintegrating and corrupt Europe of the 1930s. An unsavory murky beast full of radical politics, opportunists, spies, financial malaise and men accumulating power through any means. It is a world on the march to its destiny of destruction. Though the film was produced in 1944, it takes place in the build-up to the war. The structure is similar to that of Citizen Kane. A man dies and instead of a newsreel narrating the life of that man, this time it is a police officer telling a fiction writer.  One of polite detective novels. This sets him on a path to discover who Dimitrios really was. He does this by going from Istanbul to Athens to Sofia to Geneva and finally to Paris interviewing people that knew him, loved him and want to kill him. They tell of their dealings with him in flashback form. By the end of his search the writer has turned as savage as the world he lives in.


It begins with a bloated dead body washing ashore on the Bosporus with the identity of Dimitrios sewn inside his shabby clothes. The head of the Istanbul police Colonel Haki is a fan of the mysteries of the Dutch writer Leyden and meets with him and tells him about Dimitrios.  Haki was also a character in Ambler's novel Journey into Fear and in the 1943 film Orson Welles portrays him with zest and a large fake nose. In that one Haki is very manipulative in a sly boisterous way and you wonder if here he is telling all this to Leyden in hopes to spur him into digging up information on the dead man. Leyden is being played by Peter Lorre. I am not sure if this is the best casting but it is an interesting choice. Lorre play it very straight with none of his usual eye-rolling or offbeat characterizations. Leyden is supposed to be an ordinary man, not a hero, not a brave man - instead a cautious ethical man who through his fascination for uncovering Dimitrios for a possible book gets him far out of his comfort zone into a very dangerous one. Lorre plays him accordingly.


Another man is also interested in the dead man. We first spot him in the distance, a looming large figure that gets closer. His eyes dead. Mr. Peters. Impeccably polite even when he has a gun pointed at you. He goes to the morgue but the body has been disposed of. He wants to make sure Dimitrios is in fact the dead man. Played by Sydney Greenstreet in his quiet menacing manner. Greenstreet and Lorre again.  The camera loves shooting him from below with a light on his face making him larger than life, mysterious and forbidding. He realizes that Leyden is on the scent of Dimitrios and introduces himself at the end of a pistol. His favorite saying is "There is not enough kindness in the world". He wants to go into partnership and points Leyden in the right directions. By the time his research is over Leyden has a good picture of a man who dealt with murder, theft, blackmail and assassination. He is totally immoral. His master is simply money. He fits perfectly into this Europe. He is played in the flashbacks by Zachary Scott beginning as a small time hood and rising to an urbane cold-blooded man of influence.  It is directed with polish and atmosphere by Jean Negulesco in his feature debut.  One of the classic tales of intrigue. As a note of possible interest - thiis is the book that Bond reads on the airplane to Istanbul in From Russia with Love. From one author of spy novels to another.