leethomas-11621 Be warned: The night train doesn't appear until an hour in! Naughton Wayne as cricket-loving Caldicott and Basil Radford as golf-playing Charters steal the movie! Shame fake outdoor sets give the film an amateurish air (but it was wartime). (viewed 10/16)

Robert J. Maxwell One of Carol Reed's earlier works, it can't be all bad, though it's propelled by the usual propaganda of the war years. It opens with Hitler in a long shot, having a tantrum and banging his fist on a map of Austria. Dissolve to boots goose stepping down the Austrian streets. Back to Hitler, howling about the Sudetenland and slamming his fist on the map. Horses, carriages, ranks of soldiers in Nazi helmets, flags flying, in Czechoslovakia. We get the impression that Hitler's yen for Lebensraum is infinite and will never be satisfied until he plants the swastika all over the world, including Hoboken and the North Pole.You have to love the rooms these movie dictators occupy. Hitler's office is the size of O'Hare Airport and there are two sets of small round tables and chairs on the floor, period. If you were seated at one table and wanted to speak to someone at the other, you'd have to walk fifty feet. I'd love to live in a palace with rooms like that, instead of this abandoned railway car in the middle of the Chichuahuan desert.It's an enjoyable thriller with many comic moments, most of them provided by Radford and Wayne, fretting over golf clubs, as they fumed over missing the cricket match in Hitchcock's "The Lady Vanishes." They also gave some respite to the horror and mystery of "Dead of Night" in 1945.The plot is too complicated to describe in any detail. Rex Harrison is a special agent impersonating a major in the Wehrmacht in order to smuggle the appealing Margaret Lockwood and her scientist father out of Germany to the safety of neutral Switzerland. Paul Henreid is an SS officer determined to spoil their plans.The performances are adequate to the task, which isn't very demanding, but wardrobe had not gotten down with any accuracy the uniforms worn by the Germans. Harrison has a tall, lean figure and a face with the dimensions of John Carradine's. And, booted, in his tight army uniform with its riding breeches and too-tall cap, from certain angles he could pass for a cross between a human being and a giraffe. Paul Henreid (née Paul Georg Julius Hernreid Ritter von Wassel-Waldingau in Austria-Hungary) is usually a hero, as in "Casablanca" but he also proves himself to be a capable and handsome villain.It's certainly of the period, but I enjoyed it.

st-shot Before Carol Reed perfected his directorial chops with a streak of classics after the war he made this mildly suspenseful and a touch improbable thriller with a patriotic message. It doesn't have the style, precision editing, or Robert Krasker lensing but Rex Harrisson and Paul Henreid duel well as adversaries with enough tension filled moments to keep things interesting.After escaping to England from Prague with his daughter (Margaret Lockwood) Dr. Bauman is lured back to Germany and into the hands of the Gestapo. British secret service agent Gus Bennet ( Harrison) is dispatched to pose as a senior officer and somehow get them back. Claiming that he and the daughter were once old flames he convinces SS members to let him try and seduce her over to their side. The premise is a bit of a stretch but Harrison looks impressive in a Nazi uniform and Henreid's ambiguous Gestapo officer is a formidable foe as he matches wits with Harrison in the tight claustrophobic confines of the Munich bound train in which Reed not only builds suspense but makes a clarion call to all Brits and free nation to do their part in defeating Nazism.

edwagreen Very good Rex Harrison and Margaret Lockwood vehicle at the dawn of World War 11. As Nazi Germany goes on the march against Austria, The Sudetenland and the rest of Czechoslovakia, a woman and her father prepare to flee the Czech country only for her to be imprisoned. The father, a scientist, is desired by the Nazis to work for them.While the father escapes, the daughter is trapped and imprisoned. There she meets Paul Henried, who comes to her aid to get her to England. What she doesn't know is that Henried is a Nazi official himself who wants Lockwood to lead him directly to her father.When this does happen, Lockwood, in England, had met secret agent Rex Harrison. Harrison goes to Germany disguised as a German army official trying to get Lockwood and her father out.The film is a good one as there are constant twists along the way. Naturally, Harrison is recognized by 2 British men in Germany, but luckily he was as they are later able to warn him that the Germans know what he is up to.The ending is an exciting chase scene as the trio flee to Switzerland via a ski lift with Henried and his men in hot pursuit.Surprisingly, the film has little violence.