CONFIDENTIAL AGENT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 383, 25 October 1946, Page 32

CONFIDENTIAL AGENT

(Warner Bros.) és

CCORDING to the advertisements, this presents "the loveliest pair in pictures" -to wit, Charles Boyer and Lauren Bacall. "Loveliest"* is not an adjective which «1

would myself have’ thought of applying to either, especially since Mr. Boyer has, by his own account in this story, supposedly just gone through two years of hell in the Spanish Civil War and is cone not looking his best,,and since Miss Bacall has not;'so far as I am concerned anyway, improved noticeably in appearance, demeanour, or. acting ability since I had the misfortune to encounter her in To Have and Have Not. Yet curiously enough, ’on the score of plot and treatment this film which Hitchcock did not direct resembles a Hitchcock thriller much more closely than the one above which he did. Here we have the hapless lovers, ‘particularly the hero, pursued relentlessly from one dread adventure to another, blunderin deeper and deeper into intrigue and mi fortune, wanted by the police as eagerly as they’ are wanted by the villains who line their path. He is an agent of the. Spanish Republican Government who has gone to England to buy coal for the Loyalists; she is the dissolute, cynical daughter of a mine-owning peer; the villaing¢ who shoot at him and beat him up whenever they get the chance are, ‘of course, agents of Franco; and the London police are after him for a murder which the villains have pinned on him: Among the various aspects of violence which the story exploits there is even the edifying spectacle of Charles Boyer deliberately slapping a dying woman in (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) the face. To my mind this is no recommendation for the film at all, and the incident will. not, I think, be relished by Mr. Boyer’s admirers, even though it is true that the woman is a supporter of Franco and: has just pushed a nice little girl out. of a high window, and is therefore not deserving of much consideration. Rather ironically, .she who gets slapped is easily the most. outstanding member of the cast; Katina Paxinou, who should be remembered as Pilar in For Whom the Bell Tolls, and who once again acts everybody else off the screen. You may consider her performance worth a visit to Confidential Agent; but that is just about all the film has to offer, for in spite of the stars, the lurid action, and the sense of predicament which the story imparts, it is on the whole a fairly pedestrian effort.

dangles a snakeskin gauntlet. Their eyes MOOG Saisie The fashionshle nar.

trait paimter is being cartied out by a back wry. And who would guess (except the audience) that Gregory is the dashing sex maniac, last of the Gorgonblasts, who has just brought off a sensational double suicide of twin sisters? » +++... Fingers grapple. Mouth applies suction to mouth. The bar-tender shivers. 7 : They marry. He gives her as a wedding present an ocean liner and off they go on their honeymoon. They visit Palm Beach, San Francisco, Lisbon, Casablanca. All their relatives and friends are on board, playing water polo. She re-reads Forever Amber, while he dashes off song-hits and a concerto-all but the last fifteen bars, which won’t come. Why not? He hesitates. His music needs something. He steals a glance at Petunia who, behind her novel, has been watching him strangely. In a delirium of happiness each plans to murder the other. They ‘succeed, simultaneously. "Oh, Gregory." "Petunia! .... It was better this way... ." (Here, some tricky crosscutting will have excited the serious filmgoer). It is then revealed that the Second Engineer, whose stories about schizophrenia have kept the poker-room in a roar, is really a psychoanalyst’ who has studied their cases and planned the whole thing. After a chased aloft by detectives with machine-guns he takes a dive down the main funnel. Astonishment of two stokers eating their breakfast. The ship strikes an iceberg and sinks. A copy of Forever Amber is seen floating among the wreckage under tropical skies; near it is a piano, and on this the waves play the missing bars of the concerto. The End.