20th Century-Fox. Director Fritz Lang; Producer Kenneth Macgowan (assoc.); Screenplay Dudley Nichols; Camera Arthur Miller; Editor Allen McNeil; Music Alfred Newman; Art Director Richard Day, Wiard B. Ihnen
Walter Pidgeon
Joan Bennett
George Sanders
John Carradine
Roddy McDowall
Ludwig Stossel
Extended operations of the Gestapo are displayed in this film version of Geoffrey Household's novel, Rogue Male.
Household's tale of an English big game hunter and adventurer who invades the closely guarded precincts of Berchtesgaden to draw a bead on Hitler with an unloaded rifle, his capture and torture by the Gestapo; escape and return to England and further hounding by German agents; and final dropping back into Germany with a rifle for a future crack at Hitler, fails to sustain adventurous excitement on screen.
Walter Pidgeon is the Englishman hounded by the Gestapo. He does a good job of the assignment throughout. Joan Bennett is the Limey girl who befriends him, but her attempts at affected cockney accents are always synthetic. George Sanders is generally menacing as the Gestapo chief.
Fritz Lang's direction maintains excellent suspense in the first half, but yarn hits the skids for the second section to wind up with a series of overdrawn and inconclusive sequences.
(B&W) Extract of a review from 1941. Running time: 100 MIN.
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