Auf Ehrenwort

I am like the poster who managed to go 40 years without seeing this movie. I can say that I liked it very much.

Yes it was a war time movie with all the baggage that entails, but the acting and story were good especially for this genre. It had tension and that tension never really let up for long. The turns and twists of the story were well grounded and the actions made sense within the context of some theatrical license. As with most movie buffs, your mind is ahead of the movie. But in this one I was never really sure which way the story would turn until the end. To me, that is a job well done.

I suppose if it were made today, Flynn would have been just as likely to not have done the noble thing. In the interests of a just society, I am glad he did. I too thought it was one of his best performances.

The story takes place in Poitou in the Gartempe Valley.A really nice valley ,but which does not look like the one depicted in the film.THe river is actually hemmed in by steep banks .And how strange to hear people from la Vienne department -who have a marked accent - speak English! Geographically and historically ,this is a deeply inaccurate movie.Without any paper ,Picard can travel without any problem from the small village near Poitiers to Paris .Made in 1944,it was ,like so many others ,a propaganda movie ("La Marseillaise" can be heard at the end of Walsh's work.) Forget the background and you have an absorbing movie,the subject of which is still relevant today.Flynn portrays Picard a sentenced-to-death man,who,on his way to the guillotine ,is saved by the gong (He will say later: "the only help I got from the sky was bombs").But a Javertesque cop (Lukas) is hot on his heels and he arrests him again.

A saboteur blew up a bridge over La Gartempe .The reprisals are terrible:if the "criminal" does not surrender by Tuesday ,one hundred French hostages will be shot.Picard suggests a deal to the cop "I 'd rather be shot than put my head in the guillotine ;so let's make a deal: I 'll tell the Gestapo I'm the saboteur and a hundred lives will be spared.But give me three days just to live..." These three days will be full of unexpected twists,of treason,of nasty tricks (the inhabitants of the village trying to find a scapegoat:"you are inspired by the devil" says the priest;the old lady suggesting an old man he give him up cause he 's got no family) ,of moments of happiness (Picard finds love with the gorgeous Louise -a brunette,Lucile Watson ,who I first mistook for Jennifer Jones-) ,but also of doubt and fear.Interest is sustained till the very last pictures.Flynn gives a mature performance ,far from his dashing usual heroes.Excellent supporting cast.

"Uncertain Glory" might have influenced Henri Jeanson and Christian-Jaque when they made their underrated " Le Repas des Fauves" (1964).

It was not until Marcel Ophul's 'Le Chagrin et la Pitié' that the myth of unified French resistance during the Nazi occupation was well and truly shattered. In this film from twenty-six years earlier France is likened to a nag who is 'too old to beef and too tough to die.'

This is a formulaic Warner Bros treatment but what a formula! Fluid editing and atmospheric cinematography from Warner stalwarts George Amy and Sidney Hickox with a dramatic score by Adolph Deutsch.

Warners had taken a chance on the unknown Errol Flynn as Captain Blood in 1935 and in Jack Warner's words: "we knew that we had grasped the brass ring in our thousand to-one shot spin." This is the fifth of seven films starring Flynn and directed by Raoul Walsh and as Flynn is the uncredited executive producer for his own short-lived Thomson Company one assumes he had a say in the casting.

Paul Lukas seems the obvious choice following his stunning performance in 'Watch on the Rhine' and it is the dynamic between his Inspector Bonet and Flynn's criminal Picard/Lafont that makes the film work. There is the customary mish mash of accents of course and Hollywood's inevitable 'God' element is here represented by the charismatic priest of Dennis Hoey. The formidable Lucille Watson never disappoints and there is a lovely performance by the enchanting newcomer Jean Sullivan who soon gave it up to concentrate on her first love, dance.

Throughout its forty-year existence Warners had some trash but it was seldom boring or pretentious and this entertaining film, although certainly not a 'classic', is no exception.

Right after Flynn's rape trial Warner put him in "quickie" inexpensive films not knowing how the public would respond to Flynn films. Uncertain Glory was one of them. Most reviewers of the time panned the film as a minor Flynn vehicle and heroic Flynn nonsense. However, as time has passed some modern day reviewers have re-evaluted this film and some have commented that Flynn gives a really good performance in a pretty darn good cat and mouse drama. And I totally agree. The story is interesting and the interplay between Flynn and Oscar-winning(The Watch on the Rhine) Paul Lukas is terrific. I think this is maybe Flynn's most underrated film. Whenever I watch it I imagine by Flynn's character the ending could have gone quite different and been more unpredictable but knowing the times(1944) and still in the midst of WWII the ending had to be what it was... Patriotic. Again, I think "Uncertain Glory" is a very underrated Flynn movie. *** of **** rating...easy.

Uncertain Gory is a thoughtful, well-made war/intrigue thriller staring Errol Flynn and Paul Lukas. Flynn, whose acting skill was oft unfairly derided as suitable only for swashbuckling, athletic roles, could have easily let himself be overshadowed by Lukas, a high-class dominant character actor known for his acerbic, psychological portrayals. In fact Flynn seems to have been inspired by his co-star and turns in what may have been the best acting job of his career.

While Flynn usually played the dashing hero, and Lukas was often cast in sinister roles, here the roles are reversed. Lukas portrays an upright police inspector escorting scummy lifelong criminal and convicted murderer Flynn through Nazi-occupied France to face the guillotine. As the Germans are preparing to execute a hundred French hostages unless the saboteur who blew up a bridge with a German troop train on it surrenders himself, Flynn suggests he could end his misspent life with a noble gesture by claiming to be the saboteur. He would rather be executed by firing squad anyway, he avers, than face the awful prospect of beheading. Against his better judgment, the inspector agrees. The complications and suspense hereafter hinge on whether consummate conman Flynn is sincere, or is he working the con of his life -- for his life. The ensuing cat-and-mouse game between the wily criminal and the determined, suspicious policeman provides an entertaining, suspenseful story and a pair of brilliantly realized character studies by Flynn and Lukas. Along the way, the criminal picks up the help of a naive, provincial shop girl, Jean Sullivan, a pretty, lithesome flamenco dancer, brilliantly cast in her introductory movie roll. Part of the suspense turns on whether Flynn actually loves the girl or is just using her.

Director Raoul Walsh has cinematographer Sid Hickox use many closeups to catch every nuance of facial expression in constructing deeply psychological and spiritual character studies. As in all Warner Brothers pictures of this era, the marvelous supporting cast sports many familiar and expressive faces. Lucille Watson plays her usual nasty matron as the bitter, manipulative mother of one of the hostages. Faye Emerson sizzles as one of Flynn' hard-bitten molls in the early going. James Flavin, almost unrecognizable in a black mustache and an Adrian helmet, turns in his typical stolid, authoritarian presence in a typically thankless roll as a harried militia captain feverishly searching for the saboteur. But Dennis Hoy is absolutely riveting as the parish priest. He is like Moses come down from the mountain as he roundly denounces as sinful and demoniacally inspired the plans of Watson and confederates to free their loved ones by fingering and innocent man as the saboteur. He is more quietly moving as he asks his congregation to kneel and beg God's forgiveness for their sins and the sins of their country which have caused them to be delivered into the hands of the enemy they hate.

Herein is the aspect of this picture different from what one sees throughout most of the classic movie era or any other time. Characters routinely pray and invoke the help of God, and there is much philosophical talk of God. Though ridiculing and joking at the time, Flynn's decadent thief is seen to be visibly moved as he watches tough cop Lukas kneel to pray in the church they have entered to avoid the Nazis and their Vichy militia toadies. We never know what Lukas is praying for -- his family in Paris? the success of their perilous scheme? forgiveness of his sins? -- but we are moved. At least those of us who are Christians are. Likewise as the escaped Flynn watches old people praying in a farm yard for the deliverance of the hostages and his innocent girlfriend lighting a candle for the same blessing. Such scenes were seldom seen in the l930's or the later 1940's. Hollywood was happy to forget God most of the time. Most of the rest of us are, too, until we start having troubles. World War II was a time of deep, deep, dark, dark troubles for the whole world. So Hollywood, like everyone else, except perhaps the most die-hard of commies, was remembering God. As soon as the war was over, and brighter times returned, God was promptly forgotten again.

Those hoping for a rat-a-tat-tat war action movie will be disappointed by Uncertain Glory. There is little action, though much suspense. This is more of a thinking person's Errol Flynn picture. It may be too philosophical and too Christian for some, but it should be rewarding in any case for the intense, psychological character studies by Flynn, Lukas, and the sterling supporting cast. A fine moral-boosting World War II piece, and top grade Old Hollywood entertainment from "the best of times and the worst of times."