In his second Hollywood film as writer/director*, Billy Wilder shows preternatural confidence handling a tricky wartime spy thriller. With Charles Brackett, his writing/producing partner, it’s an update of HOTEL IMPERIAL/’27, a superb Mauritz Stiller/Pola Negri silent, moving what had been a constantly changing WWI Austrian/Russian frontline to recent WWII North African action. Focus also shifts, insider to outsider, as lone British survivor Franchot Tone clambers out of his destroyed tank and hides at a local desert hotel, the only place within miles. (This opening reel, all but silent: sand dunes, tank tracks, a desperate man; a statement of cinematic purpose from Wilder.) Once at the nearly deserted hotel, Tone talks his way onto the staff, replacing a dead man no one knew was also working as a Nazi plant. And Field Marshall Rommel, due any minute, expecting a report. Yikes! With Akim Tamiroff as the skittish Egyptian hotel manager; Anne Baxter, excellent as hotel housekeeper (with zee French accent); and Erich von Stroheim, back in Hollywood to play Rommel. This was Wilder’s first film with John Seitz, a transformatve cinematographer who does for Wilder what he recently did for Preston Sturges, making a visual stylist out of a dialogue man. The effect miraculous; the film outstanding. (Or is till a rushed ending with montage & titles quickly getting us thru what ought to have been a fourth act.)
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Preston Sturges led the way for Hollywood writer/directors with THE GREAT MCGINTY/’40. Then Wilder, also at Paramount, stepped up to helm THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR/’42. Forgotten in most accounts his previous work in France, writing & directing Danielle Darrieux in a fine 1934 romantic charmer MAUVAISE GRAINE.
DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned, HOTEL IMPERIAL, if you can find it. In addition to the 1927 silent, there’s a 1939 version with Isa Miranda & Ray Milland (not seen here).
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