Does the Road to Vienna Pass through Munich?

Night Train to Munich is an obscure movie; an early Carol Reed film made at the start of World War II. It's hardly the best film of Reed's career, but it more than deserves its recent Criterion Collection reissue.

Philip Kemp's fine essay introducing the Criterion edition of Night Train to Munich concludes by calling the 1940 film a "preparatory sketch" for Reed's later masterpiece, The Third Man. As much as I enjoyed reading Kemp's thoughts on the film, I'm not entirely sure that I can subscribe to his last words on it. For Night Train to Munich lacks most of The Third Man's defining characteristics. One could compare Night Train's conventional score with The Third Man's zither music; or one could compare the two film's senses of humor – recall that the two funniest characters in The Third Man die in a sewer; or perhaps we could contrast movies' attitudes toward romance; but the most noticeable difference, to me at least, lies in the movie's settings. Reed shot almost all of his 1949 production location in Vienna, but in 1940 he had no choice but to film Night Train to Munich on sets.

Some months ago I reviewed another WWII "propaganda" film, Fritz Lang's Man Hunt. It was far more angry and violent than most films of the period. Lang, a German refugee, had a fine sense of the Nazi's radical evil; Reed, at least in 1940, did not. Kemp's Criterion introduction apologizes for the film's comic take on the Nazis and their concentration camps, rightly pleading that the the director had no way of knowing just what horrors Hitler was perpetrating. It's true that the heroine makes light of her concentration camp experience, but Reed also shows the Nazi penchant for torture, cruelty, and murder.

Night Train to Munich has been ill-served by its title. Though the film indeed contains a Munich-bound locomotive, the film ranges far outside of it, encompassing Czechoslovakia, England, Germany, and Switzerland. Including "train" in the title also reminds audiences of the similarities between Reed's film and Hitchcock's train-set The Lady Vanishes. Margaret Lockwood returns from the previous film in a new, less-lively role as a scientist's daughter. Far more memorable are Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne as Charters and Caldicott, The Lady Vanishes' cricket-fixated comic relief. One really must marvel at their poor luck – twice in three years their European vacations have dissolved into violence and gunplay! One would expect them to be more struck by the coincidence, but the script is as stolid and unflappable as Charters and Caldicott wish they were.

There's one remarkable plot twist in this film, and I'm about to spoil it. Fifteen minutes in, the audience discovers that the competent and charming concentration camp escapee Karl Marsen's true occupation: Gestapo spy. The revelation would be surprising enough on its own, but the casting provides an additional frisson for film fans; Paul Henreid, famous as the Resistance hero of Casablanca, plays Marsen. Henreid's villainy seems more sinister and threatening in light of his later iconic performance. For two-thirds of the movie I half-expected Marsen to turn out a triple agent.

Though Margaret Lockwood received top billing, she's outshone by Henreid and by Rex Harrison as the jaunty (and campy) British spy Dicky Randall. Randall's espionage capabilities vary wildly from scene to scene – he doesn't seem a very good shot and falls victim to obvious traps – yet Harrison never disappoints. Still, my favorite performances in the movie come from Radford and Wayne. Charters and Caldicott were hilarious in The Lady Vanishes, and they're equally good fun here. I understand the characters recur in several other films, and I'm afraid I may have to track some of those down. They're funny enough that I can't imagine any film with the two of them could be a total loss.

Night Train to Munich is one of the best films I've watched this year. It's well-paced, surprising, and funny. It's not as artistically accomplished as The Third Man, but it has more than enough panache to make up for its shortcomings.

Lost Innocence from Greene and Reed

On the occasions I review classic movies, I generally try to make the film in question, however old it might be, appear relevant. Today's film, The Fallen Idol, has been in film buff news of late, though not for happy reasons. Until recently, this fine movie was available as a Criterion Collection DVD. Last month, StudioCanal sold the rights to this and over twenty other films to Lions Gate. Criterion is known for producing just about the best DVD and Blu-ray packages on the market. Lions Gate is known for the Saw series and action films.

Now that I've made my small protest, let's get on with the review.

I decided to watch The Fallen Idol because it was the first of three collaborations between British novelist Graham Greene and British director Carol Reed. The second Greene-Reed production, The Third Man, is a masterpiece and one of my all-time favorite films. The Fallen Idol isn't quite so perfect a film as its followup, but it deserves to be far better-known than it is.

The Third Man's noirish backdrop is post-war Vienna, bombed-out, rubble-strewn, and poorly-governed. The city is so central to the film that it's almost impossible to imagine it taking place anywhere else; one cannot have The Third Man without ruined Vienna. The story of The Fallen Idol, on the other hand, could take place just about anywhere – most of the action takes place in a few rooms of an unnamed country's London embassy. The trips outdoors, though beautifully shot, tend to be fleeting. We see glimpses of London throughout the film, but it hardly defines the movie. Perhaps the film's constrained setting shouldn't surprise; The Fallen Idol originated in a Greene short story called "The Basement Room."

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about The Fallen Idol is its reliance on a child actor. Bobby Henrey was only eight when he starred as Phillipe, the ambassador's son. Phillipe is completely believable, and it's hard to watch him suffer and grow disillusioned, even if the film ends on a happier note than its bleak source material. Phillippe is a child and the screenwriters thankfully neglected to make him wise or coherent beyond his years; if the dialogue ever sounds false, I didn't notice. If anything, Phillipe can be too convincing – when he pesters or whines, the audience cringes.

Phillipe's titular "idol" is the embassy's head butler, Baines (Ralph Richardson), evidently the only adult to pay any attention to the ambassador's son. Baines is a kind man with a truly shrewish wife (Sonia Dresdel) and a beautiful would-be mistress (Michele Morgan). On a weekend when most of the embassy staff is out and Phillipe's parents are in their own country, the young boy finds himself involved in a domestic intrigue that ends in tragedy, scandal, and a police investigation. Phillippe witnesses (but misinterprets) a death, lies to the police, and generally receives a horrible introduction to the adult world. When his parents return at the end of the film, we see a look of cautious hope on the boy's face, but we doubt that he shall recover quickly. The original story, on the other hand, assures that the protagonist never got over his awful experience. In The Third Man, Reed and Greene play innocence for laughs and the occasional sigh. Here, they play innocence for tears.

Much like The Third Man, The Fallen Idol features remarkable cinematography. Much of the film is shot from low angles, giving us a "child's-eye" view of the proceedings. Phillipe doesn't understand most of what's going on around him; the camerawork helps the audience enter into his incomprehension and fear. With the aid of clever lighting, the embassy's main room changes from homey and inviting to sinister and threatening. When Phillippe first clambers down a fire escape to meet with Baines, everything is clean, white, and vibrant. Later, as Phillipe flees the embassy at night, the same fire escape, shot from the same angle, looks like a stairway to hell. In one powerful scene near the end of the movie, Phillipe runs alone and desperate through dark and empty London streets. The cinematography calls to mind the sewer chase in Reed's next movie, but in that film the fleeing figure deserves his fate. In The Fallen Idol, no one deserves the awful things that happen to them.

For all its brilliance, The Fallen Idol has a few important shortcomings. Most importantly, the endearing protagonist has a bad habit of disappearing; Phillipe is offscreen for far too much of the movie while the adults (inadvertently) decide his fate. Phillipe is the movie's viewpoint character, and the movie grows awkward when it strays too far from him. When Phillipe does affect the events that go on about him, his influence seems somewhat inorganic. There's also a little bit of over-obvious symbolism – Phillipe has a pet snake – that seemed a tad contrived to me. Still, its few stumbles don't harm The Fallen Idol too much. Would that more films provided so little to quibble about.

The Fallen Idol is an extremely good film, possibly a great one. It's painfully honest, well-written, and well-acted, but I don't think it's quite so compelling as The Third Man. You should see it, but watch Reed and Greene's second film first. Expect a review of the third and final Greene-Reed collaboration, Our Man in Havana, sometime in the coming weeks.