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How sad is this?

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

A post WWII snoozer about an American (Dick Powell) investigating the death of his wife. The plot involves Nazi war criminals, shady dealings, European settings that have been turned into rubble by the war, and all of it is pretty dull. It's billed as a film noir, but like so many such films, it's only done so because it's in black and white, was released in the 1940s, and has a strong crime/espionage element to it. But it really doesn't feel like a film noir in any significant way, not in its tone or themes. That wouldn't be a criticism if the film was better, but it's unfortunately long and draggy. Edward Dmytryk, who could show a lot of panache when he wanted to (see "Crossfire") directs with no discernible style here.Grade: C

Early entry in the film-noir cycle and taking place in a "real-time" post war milieu, this one has the odd distinction of not having any Americans in the story. Even our beleaguered War Hero is Canadian. This was a trend that developed during the war as the world began to shrink rapidly and we all became Earth citizens.The darkness and ambiguity of the film is by design. Although the Axis had been defeated it did not come without a very heavy toll. Here the psychological pain manifesting itself in dizziness and headaches slows down but does not stop our angry, bitter, revenge seeking husband from taking on what's left of the "scum, not salt, of the earth".Some very typical cynical dialog and fast talking back and forth keep things moving, as does the interesting lighting and claustrophobic sets that "corner" this joyless juggernaut as he stumbles through a maze of deception to defeat not only the murderers of his wife but the enemies of the free world and their diabolical determination.Heavy going, deep and convoluted plot developments, and wordy transitions make for an uneasy visionary venture infected with PTSD. This is how film-noir celebrated V-Day.

I really enjoyed this war-set film noir with avenging angel Dick Powell continent-hopping to track down the shadowy Nazi commander who ordered the killing of his young wife.The plot is a bit labyrinthine and probably peopled with too many characters but director Dymytrk keeps up the tension throughout and genuflects regularly in the direction of film noir with shadowy shots a-plenty, a mysterious woman who may or not be on Powell's side as well as Powell's turn himself as a sort of amateur private eye, getting deeper and deeper out of his depth as he closes in, he thinks, on his prey.Powell doesn't do hangdog like Bogart or style like Grant, but he's deadpan and feisty by turns and does a reasonable job carrying the film from chapter to chapter. I also liked Walter Slezak as a sort of younger version of Sydney Greenstreet, trying to play both ends against each other but coming a cropper by the end as two quite grisly murders are enacted for us.I liked the early location shots in war torn Europe and was otherwise satisfied too, with director Dymytrk doing a good job keeping the plates all spinning and who intelligently treats this terse thriller with a bit more attention to detail than other more slapdash filmmakers.I'll watch almost every noir film I can as it's probably my favourite movie type and consider this effort, if occasionally a touch on the dry side, nevertheless a fine example of this particular genre.

This film, made immediately after the War, is about fleeing Nazis and Vichy collaborators. They are succinctly described in the dialogue by someone who says of them: 'They don't consider themselves to be defeated.' And that was true of those who escaped. Indeed, the post-War phase of Nazism could be described as the metastasis of Nazism. Deprived of their original host body, Germany, which had finally died as a result of their having infected it, they spread throughout the larger body of the world, like carcinoma cells, lodging wherever they could, and proliferating when possible, aided by all their stolen gold which had been looted from all the capitals of Europe. (A lot of it was smuggled out of Germany in tanks of hazardous chemicals.) Their primary destinations were Switzerland, Sweden, Chile, and Argentina. Switzerland and Argentina are the ones featured in this story, most of which takes place in Buenos Aires (though it is entirely a studio set where everyone speaks English and no one seems to know any Spanish!) The film was directed by Ed Dmytryk, a passionate Nazi-hater who was later black-listed by Hollywood for his left wing sympathies. Because of his long-standing political persuasion, he was that much more alert to metastastic Nazism than most people of the time, who were simply glad for the War to be over and who naively imagined than 'over' meant 'over'. There are a few purple passages in the script which sound as if they were lifted from a political pamphlet. The lead character is played by Dick Powell, a solemn-jowled actor who does not show any humour or even politeness. He plays a demobbed Lieutenant Colonel of the Canadian Air Force who has come out of imprisonment and hospital, slightly dazed and shell-shocked, to discover that his French wife Céleste, who was a young Resistance fighter in France, has been betrayed and murdered by Vichy collaborators, along with many of her companions, including even the priest who had married them. Powell goes berserk and wants vengeance. His French father-in-law tries to restrain him but cannot, and Powell charges off to Berne where he picks up a trail to Argentina to pursue the man responsible, a mysterious figure known as Marcel Jarnac (played in arch-sinister fashion by Luther Adler), who had been a close aide to Pétain. In trying to locate the elusive Jarnac, who is supposed to be dead but is not really dead, he traces Madame Jarnac. However, there is a hitch: she is not really Madame Jarnac at all but has been pressured into pretending to be Jarnac's 'widow', while having never even met Jarnac herself. Certainly that is an unusual plot twist for such stories. She is played by the French actress Micheline Cheirel, a fragile-looking creature with a vulnerable face who was married to John Loder just before his marriage to Hedy Lamarr. She stopped making films two years later, in 1947. In this film, Walter Slezak has a prominent role playing an unscrupulous and dishonest fixer for the Nazis, and Morris Carnovsky does one of his solid and reliable characters who in this case is a Nazi-hunter. Nina Vale is a rather over the top vamp. The story is corny and unconvincing in many ways. Powell charges around like a mad dog flashing a gun and letting everyone know he wants to find Jarnac and kill him. His behaviour is so outrageously stupid that one really has no sympathy for him at all. In any case, he scowls all the time, which becomes tiresome as his one expression. As someone tries to warn him: 'You cannot catch a trout by standing on the river bank and shouting at the top of your voice "I am a great fisherman!"' However, Powell does not get the message. He continues on his rampage, blundering, getting things wrong, insulting everyone, and generally behaving like a moron. I suppose he is meant to be some kind of anti-hero. The film is deeply disappointing.