Not even bad in a good way

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

There's something to be said for the live of a man towards the most unacclaimed actress in film history to turn her into the Garbo like star you see her as. That's love. That's what it was for Republic studio head Herbert J. Yates who for over 15 years determinedly tried to make Vera Hruba Ralston a star. "Storm Over Lisbon" is one of the early attempts to make her a leading lady of mystery, but the stubborn public simply refused to buy. Ms. Hruba Ralston plays an exotic dancer in Lisbon who finds herself going down "Casablanca" territory, certainly no Ingrid Bergman, as far from that film's female star as leading man Richard Arlen was from Bogart. Doing good in a nice counterpart to "The Maltese Falcon's" Sydney Greenstreet is the imperious Erich von Stroheim, villain du jour who is out to knock off agent Richard Arlen. Ralston, photographed in good angles, can be lovely, but other angles are not so flattering. She's not so much bad as she is bland, and the fact that she dominated Republic made melodramas for much of the 1940's and 50's excludes her from being forgotten over other hopefuls who came and went much quicker. Often, she seems to be just reading her lines from cards. In scenes with von Stroheim, her amateur acting is more than obvious. When she attempts to dance to the music that later became "Stranger in Paradise", the results are simply laughable.Great production values help this move along, as well as the performance of veteran character actor Otto Kruger who disguises his distinguished voice to become truly pathetic. Mona Barrie is also very showy as von Stroheim's associate who constantly seems on the verge of betraying him. As far as world war II films are concerned, this is probably unjustly forgotten, and on the subject of the espionage side of the war, it deserves to be rediscovered. Sine moments are truly chilling with the audience in total suspense of what will happen. What will not happen, however, is any emotion from leading lady Ralston, a storm over Republic between Yates and stock holders.

I'm not one of those people who has memorized CASABLANCA or who watch it once a year. It was a good b-movie, but there are thousands of other films I need to see, so I've moved on, and I'm not in the least bothered that STORM OVER LISBON is basically Republic Pictures' low-budget echo of CASABLANCA, with Richard Arlen and Vera Ralston echoing Bogart and Bergman (after all, I can hear Republic president,and husband of Vera Ralston, Herbert Yates saying, "Bergman is a mysterious European with a seductive accent, so is Vera! This is a great vehicle for her."). The plot here is somewhat different, but there's no question that this film would not even exist without CASABLANCA. There's a lot of tension created in STORM OVER LISBON, and it's well-acted by Arlen, Robert Livingston, Erich Von Stroheim, Otto Kruger, Eduardo Ciannelli, and Republic regulars Kenne Duncan and Roy Barcroft reprising their heavy roles, but this time instead of working for an evil town boss in a western, they are working for shady club owner Von Stroheim. There's a well-staged dance sequence featuring Ms. Ralston, and after hearing for decades how bad she is, I was surprised at how bad she WASN'T. This was only her second dramatic film (I'm not counting her first two films, vehicles for her ice-skating prowess), and the script wisely does not give her many lines even though she is IN a lot of the film. The lack of dialogue helps to create a mysterious, seductive quality about Ms. Ralston, so whatever she DOES say we listen to and we apply a layer of mystery to. I don't know if her English is phonetic or not, but after having seen films starring Madonna, Tara Reid, Roseanne, and Milla Jovovich, I have no complaints about Vera Ralston. Richard Arlen is always a comforting presence in a film--his gruff, virile persona is one we want to empathize with, and he has a natural quality that makes him believable. A story of spies and intrigue and back-stabbing and desperation in the Lisbon of World War II, STORM OVER LISBON is a successful b-espionage film that is a great way to kill 70 minutes on a rainy day.