NAZI AGENT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 171, 2 October 1942, Page 13

NAZI AGENT

(M-G-M)

CAN recommend this if "you want to see another story about that underground war against the spy menace

which, to judge by the number of recent films on the topic, must occupy at least 90 per cent of the attention of all belligerents. Here we have Conrad Veidt in the dual role of twin German brothers-one the scholarly, amiable Otto Decker, a naturalised and patriotic American, the other the Herr Baron Hugo von Dettner, German consul in New York and a Narzee of the nastiest type. The discovery of an overprinted blue Guatemalan (I’m no stampcollector myself, so I may have got it wrong), is just about the most exciting event in Otto’s life until Brother Hugo turns up and blackmails him into letting his Old Curiosity Shop be used as a post-office for a spy and sabotage ring which is engaged in sending convoys for Britain to the bottom of the Atlantic. Otto patriotically rebels, Hugo arrives to execute him in the name of the Reich, Hugo stops the bullet by mistake, Otto impersonates Hugo, takes over the German consulate and the control of the saboteurs, and proceeds to put their pot on. Result: the convoys are saved, the U.S. Government closes all the consulates and ships the Narzees back home, Otto being most unfortunately among them. It would be bad enough, I imagine, if you or I were ever called on to: impersonate an ordinary citizen whose body we had just dumped in the harbour (presuming, of course, that we looked sufficiently like him for a start). If we survived the more obvious pitfalls of

cutting his best friends in the street and calling his typist "Miss Brown" instead of "Lucy," and even if we passed muster with his wife, we’d probably trip up on some simple detail like the way he held his knife or his views on fire-watching. Think, then, how much more difficult it would be to have to step right into the shoes of a man like Baron von Dettner, and not only have to pick up all the loose threads of a consulate and a sabotage agency, but also know just where you stood with all the beautiful fifth columnists who worked for you. However, Conrad Veidt is a man of parts, including dual parts, and having got rid of Otto’s beard and scholarly stvopwith the result that he looks once more exactly like Conrad Veidt-he is almost immediately transformed into the brisk, businesslike Hugo, quite au fait with a myriad details of code, sabotage, and Mysterious Beauties. Nothing could make this story probable, but Mr. Veidt is such a good actor that he can at least make it entertaining, and in parts, exciting. Playing opposite him is Ann Ayars, a Mysterious Beauty whose Kisses Mean Death (vide advertisements). While I regret to inform you that so far as I could see, nobody actually gets kissed to death in the film, I am also happy to say that it retains sufficient integrity to defy convention and reach an unhappy ending.