Night Train to Munich (1940/2010)
Starring: Rex Harrison, Margaret Lockwood, Paul Von Hernreid
Director: Carol Reed
Studio: 20th Century Fox/The Criterion Collection 523 [6/29/10]
Video: 1.33:1 B&W
Audio: English DD mono
Extras: New digital restoration, New video conversation by film scholars about Carol Reed and his screenwriters, Printed booklet with essay by film critic Philip Kemp
Length: 90 minutes
Rating: *****
This is a World War II chase movie basically, but a very good one by the director who went on later to do such classics as The Third Man, and the first major film role for the young Rex Harrison. There are similarities to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, and in fact Hitchcock might have directed Night Train to Munich if he hadn’t already moved to Hollywood. In fact Hernreid moved to Hollywood after the shooting for the film ended to avoid being incarcerated as an enemy alien in Britain (he then changed his name to Henreid, and later played Victor Lazlo, the anti-Nazi leader in Casablanca).
A Czech scientist has invented a new sort of armor and naturally the Nazi, who are taking over his country, want him. He flees Prague to England, but his daughter is apprehended by the Nazis just as she is leaving and put in a concentration camp. (These are the most disturbing scenes in the film.) A fellow inmate befriends her, they escape and cross the English channel. It turns out the German inmate is a secret Nazi double agent trying to abduct her father to Germany. The daughter is directed to a boardwalk song salesman at Brighton Beach, Gus (Rex Harrison), who is in reality a British agent protecting her father. In spite of his efforts, her father, along with the daughter, are abducted by the Nazi and taken to Berlin. Gus convinces his superiors to let him masquerade as a Gestapo bigwig and rescue them.
The fascinating printed essay mentions how much Harrison loved his Nazi uniform, which even included a monocle. It is revealed he sometimes experimented with a monocle in real life, and references to his being very dapper and impressed with himself as an actor are played out in the clever script. The whole film is an interesting picture of the British psyche at this time, just as WWII was breaking out. There is much business concerning a pair of typical upper class cricket-loving English travelers who are unlucky enough to be leaving Germany just as war is declared. One of them is more concerned about his golf clubs that he loaned to a friend in Berlin than about the war. A pair of English comic character actors play these fellows, who in the end courageously aid their old friend Gus in fooling the Nazis. The Germans are not depicted as harshly as in later movies, when Britain was actually at war and being bombed by them.
To get back to the (spoiling!) plot: Gus is successful up to a point in bluffing his way around as a Gestapo officer, although he has some close calls. The titular night train to Munich becomes highly dangerous when the Nazi double agent, who is accompanying Gus, the scientist and his daughter, learns that Gus is a British double agent. He arranges by phone to have him arrested when they arrive at Munich, but Gus and his two cricket buddies overcome him and escape, racing in a Nazi car to a tram line in the Alps between Germany and Switzerland. Of course there’s a shootout there, with brave Gus jumping between tram cars high in the air. He succeeds in getting the professor, his daughter, and himself to safety in Switzerland, while the Nazi double agent – who also had designs on the daughter – is left with nothing.
Carol Reed complained that his only gripe about the film was that due to wartime restrictions they didn’t have a very good model department at the small British studio, and “the mountains looked like ice cream.” And don’t expect a shot looking straight down from the tram emphasizing the dizzying heights in the Alps. That didn’t bother me as much as all the Nazis speaking perfect English, even with an accent sometimes, but that was just the style back then. Criterion’s restoration is of course excellent; the B&W images look like they were just shot recently instead of over 70 years ago. Night Train to Munich is just as good as the average suspenseful Hitchcock film, and debonair Rex Harrison is a kick.
— John Sunier
