Fuera del pasado

... and director Jules Dassin has Otto Becker (Conrad Veidt) as a kindly, meek German-American immigrant who runs a small bookstore and who spends his free time growing his stamp collection. His mundane life is shattered when his twin brother Baron Hugo von Detner (also Veidt) pays him a surprise visit. Baron Detner has been assigned as a diplomatic envoy in the area, and he's also heading up a secret espionage cabal who are already responsible for the destruction of supply ships headed to the European theater of the war. The Baron wants to use his brother's bookstore as an operations front, but after a series of incidents, Otto finds himself masquerading as his brother and trying to thwart the spy ring from the inside.

This "B" effort is well put together and features one of Conrad Veidt's best English-language performances. Known primarily for playing slick and sophisticated villains, his turn as the stamp-collecting brother Otto is believable and affecting. The movie is short, and it's not trying to be anything but an entertaining flag-waver, but sometimes even movies with meager ambitions can be worthwhile viewing.

As Nazi Agent came out of MGM you might get fooled as even their B pictures such as this look like A films. The lack of any stars would give it away, but this is a great example about how MGM could make any of its product look like quality.

Of course it helps here that Conrad Veidt gives a pair of performances, come to think of it three of them in this film. First as American professor and naturalized refugee from Nazi Germany, second as the new German Consul twin brother and fanatical Nazi and third as the American brother impersonating the Nazi.

It all starts when Nazi Veidt decides to force American Veidt to help with the cause making his place a drop for espionage messages. But the good Veidt kills the bad Veidt and then takes his place at the German consulate and does his own little job of sabotaging the operations.

Because of Conrad Veidt this World War II era propaganda flick holds up well still today. In essentially three roles the professor has to tread very carefully to find out who can be trusted.

Besides Veidt performances to watch are Marc Lawrence as an Italian gangster working for them and all around rat, Ann Ayars as a French dress designer and Vichy sympathizer who has a change of heart, Martin Kosleck who was always cast as Joseph Goebbels but here is Veidt's ferret faced aide at the consulate and Dorothy Tree as a Nazi agent planted with Professor Veidt. Tree had blacklist problems and never returned to Hollywood, in fact left acting altogether.

But this film is really a salute to Conrad Veidt's versatility. The plot is taken somewhat from the Ronald Colman classic The Masquerader, but the ending is straight out of that other Colman film A Tale Of Two Cities.

Catch this one when it's on and be prepared to see how well it holds up.

This was a nice little programmer from the '40s that played the lower half of double-features. CONRAD VEIDT is interesting (as always) as a pair of identical twins, one of whom is a Nazi agent. When the bad brother is killed, the good brother takes his place and has to convince everyone that he is the loyal Nazi. Only gradually do a couple of people come to realize who the man really is.

Veidt excels in the kind of role he always fared well in, especially riveting as the bad twin. Not the leading man type, he nevertheless manages to hold the screen with his histrionic finesse at playing either smooth villains or men with deeper convictions of honor.

ANNE AYARS is the lovely romantic lead and the supporting cast, which includes MARTIN KOSLECK as a fierce Nazi (a role he's played so often and so well) is more than adequate.

Good entertainment of its kind, it's a low-budget film directed by Jules Dassin.

I saw that there was a couple of Nazi films on TNT last night and decided to give them a viewing. Sometimes these old black and whites can really have interesting stories. This was true to my expectations.

This was a Jules Dassin film. He was one of the most important directors in post-WWII America. Unfortunately he got caught up in the Red Scare led by Senator McCarthy and was blacklisted. he moved to Europe, where he continued to make movies.

His most influential film was the heist movie Rififi, which inspired a genre of movies including Ocean's Eleven and Mission: Impossible.

The movie stars Conrad Veidt, who is himself a very interesting character. Most movie goers would remember him as Gestapo Maj. Strasser in the classic Casablanca. This is interesting because he was a staunch anti-Nazi who was himself chased out of Germany under threat of assassination. He was to play Dracula in 1931, but Bela Lugosi got the job. His performance in The Man Who Laughs, was used as the basis for "The Joker" in the early Batman.

Veidt give a good performance as a twin whose brother is a Nazi agent. he kills him and takes his place to fight against the Nazi underground in America.

It is not a terribly exciting film, but it was suspenseful, and a chance to see one of the great American directors and a great German/British actor.

It now seems beyond belief that in the years leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbour, films in Hollywood with strong anti-Nazi themes were discouraged so as not to offend the Germans!

This first feature of Jules Dassin represents one of the early 'message films' designed to induce a sense of paranoia in American audiences which had the salutary effect of keeping them on their guard against Nazi espionage activity. It also happens to be, in the opinion of this viewer, one of the best of its type.

Although strictly speaking a 'B' this has the presence of Conrad Veidt who is in every respect an 'A'. He has a triple role here. That of the good German, Becker and his evil twin, Baron von Detner. Through force of circumstance the former is then obliged to impersonate the latter. Herr Veidt captures brilliantly the subtle differences between the characters and their sharing duologues together enables Dassin and his cinematographer Harry Stradling Snr to utilise a split-screen effect.

Excellent support here from Marc Lawrence, Frank Reicher, Sydney Blackmer and Polish born Martin Koslek who had the distinction of being on Goebbel's hit list and ironically, playing him no less than five times. The female interest is supplied by Anne Ayars, better known as an opera singer. She is no great shakes as a actress but her role gives the film an emotional balance and the motive for Becker's act of self-sacrifice.

The script and editing are tight and Dassin's direction is subdued but effective. Although he was somewhat dismissive of his American output, his subsequent European films were a mixed bag.

This piece is really about the immaculate artistry of Conrad Veidt and it is such a pity that his fatal heart attack at just fifty denied him the satisfaction of seeing the destruction of the regime that he so despised.