Mystery reigns WWII-era films

When you think of the rotund Englishman Sydney Greenstreet, the next thought is that of Peter Lorre. The two made nine films together, beginning with "The Maltese Falcon" starring Humphrey Bogart. \nDuring World War II, most of Hollywood's leading men were called away to fight; and the attention of the studios fell on these two. But Hollywood needed to keep turning out products to stay alive, so they began to create films around older, less dashing, less handsome character actors. And Greenstreet and Lorre fit the bill and became two of the most well-known character actors to come out of World War II Hollywood.\nAn example of their collaboration is the 1944 film "The Mask of Dimitrios" released by Warner Brothers and based on a 1939 book called "A Coffin for Dimitrios" by Eric Ambler.\nLorre plays a globe-trotting mystery writer named Cornelius Leyden who is on vacation in Turkey in 1938. A bloated corpse washed ashore is identified as the feared safe-cracker, jewel thief, assassin, black mailer, and an all around insidious character named Dimitrios, played by Zachary Scott.\nThe local military flat-foot, Colonel Haki, is at a dinner party to meet Leyden. Lorre resembles Angela Lansbury's character in her television series "Murder, She Wrote" -- just as everyone and his brother know who Jessica Fletcher is, in this film, everyone apparently knows the name Cornelius Leyden. Haki is an ardent fan.\nWhile the two converse, Haki begins telling Leyden all about Dimitrios. And Leyden's curiosity is totally tweaked. Smelling a good story, he sets off to track down the mystery behind Dimitrios. The track leads him all over Europe including Athens, Belgrade, Sofia, Geneva, and Paris.\nBut this track also leads him into another man on Dimitrios' trail named Erik Peterson, played by Sydney Greenstreet.\nPeterson is very kind and someone I would call "a gentleman of the underworld." He may be a person who'd rob you blind, or black mail you to tears, but while he's doing it, he'll smile and mean it when he says 'please' or 'thank you.'\nIn this film, Lorre and Greenstreet have their typical on-screen chemistry. Here, they work much closer together than in any other of their collaborations. The two characters form a symbiotic partnership whose adhesion is the result of lots of money to be had if they find Dimitrios. \nIn one of the humorous moments of the film advertising their chemistry, Peterson is in the process of ransacking Leyden's hotel room so he can find out how much Leyden knows about Dimitrios. When Leyden walks in on him he is a little surprised and a conversation ensues. Peterson, the polite criminal he is, asks if he can use some of Leyden's stationary rather than just using it. Leyden replies, "Go ahead, you've used everything else."\nWatching the two of them walk around on screen together with their very distinct personalities, characters, and the physical reminders of something like Laurel and Hardy or Mutt and Jeff, the two are a perfect fit for their characters in the film.\n"The Mask of Dimitrios" is a nice, well organized example of film noir with its use of nighttime action, strong emphasis on shadows, flashbacks, and an examination of evil on the part of Dimitrios. Unlike "The Big Sleep," you don't need a score card to go along with the popcorn.\nuring World War II, the Allies needed to make the Germans think the invasion of Southern Europe was going to happen at a place other than Italy. And how did they do it? \nLt. Commander Ewen Montagu with British Naval Intelligence decided to make the Germans think the invasion was going to take place on the shores of Greece by letting them get a hold of some personal letters between a few British officers that said so. But then the trick is delivering the message. So he grabbed a dead man, dressed him in a uniform, and dropped him off the shores of Spain and made it look like he was a courier killed in a plane crash.\nThis war-time event is recounted in "The Man Who Never Was."\nClifton Webb plays Montagu in this true story of a naval reservist's successful attempt to save the lives of thousands of Allied troops on the shores of Sicily. Webb is a very subtle actor with excellent posture who carries himself with his typical aristocratic stage movements that trace back to his career beginnings in theatre. In one scene, we see Webb do something as simple as hold a coffee cup and make it artistic. It's the way his wrist goes a bit limp and he holds the cup up to chest height. His character also in the same scene has been poring over maps and charts for hours and hours on end. While everyone else is all ruffled in their uniforms, Webb's Montagu is still sharp as a straight edge razor.\nWebb's Indiana accent also requires little tweaking to sound as though he's an upper crust Englishman. \nMontagu is played as a very perceptive, logical, and cunningly cold-blooded spymaster who would give Freud a run for his money.\nMontagu knows the German mind well; he knows just how the enemy will react to finding a gift that's too good to be true. The dead body is given the identity of a Major Martin. He gets a new uniform. He gets a set of dog tags. He gets a few orders along with the dummy letters for his brief case. But the Montagu touch is especially clever with this next bit -- he gets a wallet with love letters, receipts from shopping, and letters from people he conducts personal business with. This extra incidental stuff composes the mundane-ness of life and gives the dead man a truthful aura.\nThe real Montagu has a cameo role in this 1956 film by 20th Century Fox as an uncredited role of an Air Marshal. But he's hard to spot.\nAlso in the film is a bit-part actor, Sir Michael Hordern, who was born in 1911 and worked all the way up to 1994, before his 1995 death. He did bit parts, voice overs, cartoons, television appearances and is probably the most prolific bit-part actor to come out of England. He's the type of actor who is in just about every film you've ever seen, but you always have a hard time putting a name with a face, or remembering the last movie you saw him in. In this film, Hordern plays General Coburn of Scotland Yard. \nThe film is an intriguing piece of work, based on Montagu's own book, which could be called a documentary. Not because it was filmed like one, but because it shows step by step a process that was very real during a time so many years ago when "The Greatest Generation" so bravely struggled against Hitler.