CLOUDS OVER EUROPE
(Columbia) If we must have films about preparation for war and the international tension-and apparently it has been decided that we must -then this is the way to make them. Contrary to the suggestion in the title, there is nothing grim and lowering about "Clouds Over Europe." It even refuses to take very seriously a plot by foreign agents of unidentified but obvious Teutonic extraction to spirit away four of His Majesty’s latest war planes for the sake of the secret gadgets they contain, This threat to the realm serves mainly as an excuse for Ralph Richardson, as an unorthodox Scotland Yard man, to potter amiably about-peacefully brandishing a symbolic umbrella--and provide cinema patrons with a feast of humorous acting. If, after "The Citadel," "Divorce of Lady XX" and "South Riding," there were any doubt that Richardson is an all-round genius, this film would dispel it. Eccentricity. in Mr. Richardson’s sleuth is not coupled with inefficiency. Undismayed by lack of co-operation from stiffnecked officials and’ industrialists, and embarrassing disclosures by a journalist sister, he meanders blithely from clue to clue, wins the support of a quixotic young airman, and eventually arrives, aboard a British destroyer, in time to take into custody a crowd of ‘sheepish Teutons whom the airman has cowed. into submission practically single-handed with a machine-gun-but not in time to prevent his oft-disappointed girl friend from marrying another man. Mr. Richardson's reaction to this minor disaster is as phlegmatic as his earlier discovery that Suspect No, 1 has been shot dead by col-
leagues when on the point of confession. While Mr, Richardson is getting in sly digs right and left with his umbrella at British bureaucracy and the customary spy-story formula, Laurence Olivier and Valerie Hobson are bickering romantic. ally in the background. This, though much more conventional, is only a few degrees less enjoyable. It may be humiliating to some to learn that "Clouds Over Europe" was made in England with American money: such persons may take comfort, however, in the assurance that the brains were British. In the words of Sleuth Richardson; " Good show!"
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19390901.2.44.2
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 10, 1 September 1939, Page 33
Word Count
352CLOUDS OVER EUROPE New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 10, 1 September 1939, Page 33
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