Perfect cast and a good story

From my favorite movies..

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Night Train to Munich (1940)This British movie was made in 1940 a year after German and Britain began WWII. It is set in the late summer of 1939, just as the declaration of war was on the horizon. And while the filming and post-production is going on, London is being bombed by the Nazi air force. (The film was released in December, several months after the first raids.)The most memorable lead is Rex Harrison playing an agent and double agent, falling in love with and saving the scientist's daughter (Margaret Lockwood) as well as the scientist himself (while he's at it). And then as a competing suitor, the dubiously aligned German officer played by Paul Henreid, who a year later would play a kind of counterpoint in the American Nazi film, "Casablanca."Director Carol Reed marshals all these forces and makes a surprisingly terrific movie. It's fast, smart, fanciful, and patriotic. It's also really really funny, and the more you catch the British humor the more you'll be glad--at times it's relentless even as its subtle. The little barbs against the Germans, both as German stereotypes and as Nazi buffoons, is highly calculated. The British come off as daring and dashing, even the bumbling travelers rise to the occasion. It's often been commented that Harrison makes a very fit precursor to James Bond, and there must be a backwards truth to that because Ian Fleming (who invented Bond) was a WWII British OSS worker. Art imitating life. Imitating art.And yes, this is an homage and reference (if not sequel) to Hitchcock's "The Lady Vanishes," including use of the same writers, the same kind of comic suspense, the same leading actress, and even two comic side characters from one train to the other. Reed even acknowledged the connections, as if he could deny them, and wanted no doubt to coattail some of the movies huge success.It taints a movie to call it propaganda, so I won't. It's not, really. What it does (just as "Casablanca" does) is strike one up for the good guys. You end the movie thinking the British might just win this thing. And at the time that wasn't a foregone conclusion--London was only sinking further into the terror of the Blitz. Of course, we know that British resolve and resourcefulness won the day, with a little outside help, and this is part of exactly that.Great stuff.

**SPOILERS** WWII thriller that has to do with the Nazis trying to capture escaped from his Nazi-occupied Checkosolvakia amour plating expert Alex Bormasch, James Harcourt. Alex made his way out of Nazi controlled Checkosolvakia to England with his daughter, who missed the plane by being stuck in heavy traffic, Anna, Margaret Lockwood, being left behind. This all happens just before the of German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. Within days of the invasion both Engand and France declare war on the National Socialist, or Nazi for short, state.Being sent to a Nazi concentration camp Anna is befriended by fellow Check inmate Karl Marsen, Paul Henreid, who helps her, as well as himself, break out of the place and sail to England. That all happened when the German Army Navy and Luftwaffe was too busy fighting the Poles to have anyone available to stop them. We soon find out that Marsen is really a Nazi spy who in turn gets the unsuspecting Anna to get her father out of hiding in the safety of jolly old England. This leads to both Anna and her father getting captured by a German U-Boat inside English waters. All that happening when Alex as well as Anne and that rat-fink Marsen went out a innocent moonlight fishing in the English Channal.Back in Germany Alex Bomasch is now being forced, against his will, to reveal to the Nazis the secret behind his super armor plating formula that's to be used to reinforce the Nazi Siegfried Line. The British M15 send in their top secret agent, before James Bond, Nicky Randall using the allies Gustav Bennett, a Nazi officer in the transportation department, to rescue both Anna and her father.The tough and nails and very flexible and acrobatic Nicky is played played by an emaciated 98 pound looking Rex Harrison.Catching the Nazi's completely flat footed Nicky ends up getting both Anna whom he fakes having an affair with, to throw the Nazis off guard, and her dad out of Germany. Nicky also gets help from British tourists Charters & Caldicott, Basil Redford & Naunton Wayne, who knew him back in England as a star cricket player and know that he's in fact not Gustav Bennett but one of the good guys; A fellow Englishman working undercover for the British Crown. Put on a train to Munich both Anna and her father are to be brought into the custody of the dreaded Gestapo whom that low down creep Marsen is a member of and in good standing with. The evil Gestapo are now ready willing and more then able to use every means at their disposal, even going so far as in torturing his daughter Anna, in order to get old man Bomasch to talk about his secret armor plating formula. Nicky by commandeering Marsen's government car has the trio-him Anna & her dad Alex-driven to the German Switzerland border where the only thing separating them from a stay at a Nazi concentration camp and freedom is a cable car taking them into neutral Switzerland!***SPOILERS***Humdinger of an ending with Nicky doing all the heroics, as well as acrobatics, for King and Country, in order to get Alex as well as Anna to safety before Bennett, now a Captain in the Gestapo, can get his hands on them. P.S The Hollywood film "Night Train to Munich" was made when the USA was technically at peace, or at least neutral, in the war between Germany and the western allies Britan and France. Still it showed where the US' heart really was in the film making the Germans the bad guys in the movie. Which may well have been one of the reasons, among many, why Hitler was always antagonistic towards the United States and its President FDR. In him feeling that FDR's ultimate goal was to come to Great Britian's, who was at the time under siege from the Nazi Juggernaut, aid! Both financially, like with the Lend Lease program, as well as militarily.This could have also been why Hitler so eagerly as well as stupidly jumped at the chance to declare war on the US, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, when he should have known better by him being engaged with both the UK and USSR at the time. This illogical act on Hitler's part, who's played in the movie by by Billy Russell, would lead to his and Nazi Germany's ultimate destruction. Which in fact it did some four years later in the spring of 1945!

Just as Germany invades the Sudatenland, Czech engineer Axel Bomasch fearing he may have to work for the Nazi cause, flees to England, being separated from his daughter Anna (Margaret Lockwood) on the way. Anna is imprisoned in a concentration camp where she befriends Czech nationalist Karl Marsen (Paul Henreid), he helps her make her escape and flees with her to England where they meet up with her father. Almost immediately they are hoodwinked by German agents posing as British naval officers and are brought back to Germany where Bomasch's knowledge on armour plating will be used for the imminent war. A fearless Gus Bennett (Rex Harrison) endeavours to travel to Germany in disguise to recapture the Domasch's in a daring raid.After the success of Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes(1938), screenplay writers Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder returned to very similar ground with Night Train to Munich, again we have Nazi's and spies in pre-war Germany, again we are on a perilous train journey and again Margaret Lockwood is the lead and we also have Naunton Wayne as Caldicott, Basil Radford as Charters reprising their roles as the amiable Cricket loving buffoons. Its not quite as polished as Hitch's film and it is a little heavy on the propaganda, Germans being dour martyrs to the cause, all the Brits being, chirpy "Mornin Govnor" types, but there's still plenty to enjoy, Rex Harrison's cocky Gus Bennett, in a series of disguises and treating us to some seaside numbers, Naunton and Wayne are comedic top form, the train scenes also have plenty of tension as we race to a heart stopping climax on a cable car.

Carol Reed is a truly wonderful director, his CV boasts the likes of The Third Man, Oliver and Odd Man Out, all great films for sure, which only makes it more infuriating that a gem like Night Train To Munich is incredibly hard to get hold of. I have only managed to catch it myself because of the unearthing of VHS tapes long thought to have been lost years ago, and it's just like finding hidden treasure I tell you! Based on a story by Gordon Wellesley, and scripted by the adroitly talented teaming of Sydney Gilliat/Frank Launder, Night Train To Munich is a lesson in how to not over blow your subject, all the sequences flow without boring the viewer, with Reed astutely approaching the material with subtlety instead of blunderbuss bluster.Another highlight of the movie to me is that it could have so easily been a propaganda bore, the Germans being the devil incarnate, but here it feels that an equality of characterisations was the order of the day. Something that many other genre pieces lost sight of further down the line. Rex Harrison, Margaret Lockwood and Paul Henreid are all excellent here, whilst wonderful comedic relief comes courtesy of Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford's English cricketers {fans of The Lady Vanishes will identify right away}. Although this picture is script driven above all else, the action sequences are a joy to behold, with the final third of the picture an unadulterated pleasure, spies and stooges, plants and treachery, oh it's all here folks, enjoy, if you can get a good print of it! 9/10