Three Faces East

Stars Constance Bennett and the mysterious, talented Erich von Stroheim (Sunset Boulevard!). Made in 1930, it's a period piece of world war I, of spies and treachery. Bennett is an operative for the germans, trying to gain the confidence of the Chamberlain family, specifically, Admiral of the British Navy. Stroheim is is employed at the Chamberlain household, but is not who he seems to be, and plays a large part in the story. while the picture quality is quite good, the sound is pretty bad, but as this is already ninety years old, this can be forgiven. we spend a lot of time watching the servants clean the visitor's guestroom. co-stars Anthony Bushell, as Arthur, brother of the deceased Chamberlain son. it's a bit of an early hollywood version of a spy thriller, but it is what it is. Bennett seems to be more interested in playing the blond bombshell than a low key spy. and even gets one of her high heels stuck in a compromising spot. and dropped a bracelet at the scene. not much of a spy! some surprises, here and there. it's entertaining. directed by Roy delRouth Story by Anthony Kelly; started out as a play, made into a silent film, then remade here. and again in 1940 as British Intelligence, also Warner Brothers.

Constance Bennett shows up at the home of William Holden -- no, not that one -- where she soon contacts the butler, Erich von Stroheim. She is a spy working for Germany, as is he. Soon se has him captivated, as well as Holden's son, Anthony Bushell. But there are other spies in the house, and it soon becomes clear that there are double agents in place. Who is working in who's real interests.

The first thing I noticed about this movie is the slow and stately pace at which the dialogue proceeds. Warner Brothers may have been producing all-talking pictures for a couple of years, but director Roy Del Ruth, working from a stage play, with screen dialogue by Arthur Caesar, clearly wants every word to be understood, so muddled is the situation. By about ten minutes in I knew who everyone was working for. By halfway through, I was utterly confused.

I am a huge Constance Bennett fan, and I have two great stories about her that I'll put at the end of the review. "Three Faces East" is from 1930, based on a play, and directed by Roy del Ruth.

Bennett plays a British agent in World War I. She is sent to London to capture a major German spy named Blecher. While staying in the house of one of the government heads near London, she realizes that the butler (von Stroheim) is a German agent, so she identifies herself as one to gain his confidence. He falls for her. He explains to her that the safe needs to be broken into nightly to see the movement of troops. Then one of the sons in the family returns home (she is supposedly the girlfriend of the other son), and he remembers seeing her during one of the conflicts, working as a nurse. Meanwhile, the butler comes under suspicion as a spy, and the circumstances become complicated.

Early sound films like this are often stilted affairs, as this one is, with people over-enunciating (Bennett seems to do this) and speaking more slowly than necessary so that the dialogue has no rhythm. It's almost comical, with the son referring to his parents as Mater and Pater. Today the acting seems overdone in spots, but that was the style; after all, a lot of the talkies actors came from the stage.

My two Constance Bennett stories: one from David Niven, who said that she was so beautiful that she could go into a room in the evening, play cards all night, come out of the room at 6 a.m. and look exactly the same. I believe it.

The other story is a funny one from one of her husbands, who nearly died while drowning. He and Bennett were divorced, but he claimed that Constance saved his life. While drowning, he had an image of her in black, sobbing, and saying, "My poor Henri," very dramatically, and garnering lots of sympathy. He said to himself, "I'm not going to let her get away with it," and managed to save himself.

All in all, "Three Faces East" is a real antique. It was remade with Boris Karloff in 1940.

I saw this movie in the early 1990s, at a screening given by William K Everson at the New School for Social Research in New York City. I usually took detailed notes during all of Mr Everson's screenings, but this time there was a disturbance in the auditorium (no, not my fault, you clever clots) and I didn't keep my notes. I can barely remember the film, which is not a point in its favour.

The action takes place during the Great War in the home of the First Lord of the Admiralty, who has the unfortunate name Sir Winston Chamberlain. (Any relation to Neville Churchill?) His butler Valdar is played by Erich von Stroheim, so it's no spoiler to report that Valdar is a spy for the Kaiser. He does everything but click his heels and wear a monocle.

Into this cosy inglenook comes Frances Hawtree ... played by Constance Bennett, who has never impressed me (except in her off-screen work on behalf of U.S. servicemen). We find out very quickly that Frances is a counterspy. She keeps reporting to Mr Yates of the Secret Service, who addresses her by her code number 'Z-1'. Which reminds me...

Most of the characters in this film are meant to be British, but the (mostly) American actors have the sense not to attempt British accents. Still, it's annoying to hear William Courtenay as Yates addressing Bennett as 'ZEE-one'. Was nobody in this production aware that in Britain the last letter of the alphabet is pronounced 'ZED'? Since Frances Hawtree and her C.O. are allegedly British, it would make sense if they got this detail right.

The film's title is a code phrase that doesn't seem to mean anything in clear. At one point, one of the male characters needs a pretext to leave the room, so he says he has to fetch his pipe ... but the pipe is a mere sham. That's as good as this gets.

I was impressed with the performance of the character actor who played Sir Winston. He gave several good performances in the early talkie era, and he deserves to be better known. Unfortunately, his name was William Holden: the same name as the later Oscar-winning leading man. Although there was a seven-year gap between the end of the older Holden's screen career and the beginning of the younger Holden's, I've seen several references which confuse the two, crediting all of the senior Holden's films to his younger and better-known namesake. Here, the senior Holden speaks his dialogue in his own natural American accent, yet he does an impressive job of conveying a proper upper-class Englishman.

Director Roy Del Ruth also deserves to be better known, but this is not one of his better efforts. I don't remember this film very well, but the fact that I *don't* remember much of it is evidence that it wasn't very good. Even von Stroheim is subdued, for once. I'll go out on a limb and rate it 5 out of 10, largely for William Holden's fine performance.

This movie looks like it's an earlier version of the Boris Karloff movie "British Intelligence" which was released in 1940, ten years after this one. The Karloff movie was pretty good. In it, a nurse is sent to England to infiltrate the household of a British Cabinet member during the War and she is to make contact with the mysterious "Strengler", who has successfully smuggled information to the German Army about Allied troop movements before the British army even gets a hold of it. Over the course of the film, the nurse/spy must keep her true identity under wraps while spying, but then it turns out that everyone's loyalties may not be to whom they were introduced as being loyal to. While the suspense isn't as taut and thrilling as todays thrillers, it's a competent spy film set during WWI.---and these actors were actually British.