Stamboul Quest

It's 1915. The Germans are wondering about British plans in Turkey. Annemarie, codename Fräulein Doktor (Myrna Loy), is brought into the office of German intelligence head von Sturm. She's actually working counter intelligence and accuses Mata Hari of turning for love. She vows never to fall in love. She is ordered to follow Douglas Beall (George Brent) to determine if he's a British spy. Ali Bey is a Turkish commander whose loyalty is suspect.

Apparently, there was a real person behind this fiction. It starts with plenty of intrigue including a possible real outing of Mata Hari. It's a functional espionage film although the tension is never that high. It doesn't have good action or dark realism. It is sorta like Mata Hari but the character doesn't have the exotic feelings. It also doesn't exude the sexuality. It's a bit bland but it does have Myrna Loy.

There is a brief scene in Stamboul Quest, as Leo G. Carroll's character stops by the entrance to a building in Berlin to look at the metal plaques attached by the entrance, identifying the business occupants. In German, the signs identify a notary, a lawyer and, in German and English, an American Dentist. Carroll paused for only a few seconds, and if not for a screen capture I made, I would not be able to check out the attention to detail that the art director or prop man put into this minor set piece. When I visited Berlin, I saw business plaques just like those in this movie, made in Culver City, which is a long way from Berlin. From the prologue at the start, describing in general terms the difference between espionage and counter-espionage, to Lionel Atwill's fine portrayal of a spymaster, Stamboul Quest is a picture ahead of its time. Transmitting coded messages in a tooth filling is not a procedure you see in many movies. There is also a love story, Myrna Loy's character, Fraulein Doktor, falling in love with the American medical student (George Brent) who gets entangled with the spies by going to the American Dentist when the counterespionage agents raid the office. 25 years later, Leo G. Carroll was the spymaster who takes advantage of Cary Grant being mistaken for George Kaplan, a fictitious agent created to catch real spies. Carroll and company notice the gallows humor in Grant's predicament, just as Atwill also finds humor in George Brent's character mistakenly getting locked up for being a spy. George Brent, on loan to MGM after going on suspension at Warners (Jack Warner must have liked Brent, since Warners was a studio that had a track record ruining actor's careers by refusing to loan them out to other studios on reasonable terms e.g. Wayne Morris blocked from working in The Killers, in the role that made Lancaster a star), is great as the medical student. As he and Myrna Loy check into the hotel in Turkey, Brent tosses into the air the coin that is the tip for the porter. The porter reaches for the coin, Brent says you mustn't reach, catches the coin first and gives it to the porter. Sort of a mean joke, but an action Herman J. Mankiewicz, the screenwriter or maybe the director, Sam Wood, saw in real life and put into the movie to make Brent's character look authentic. The effort MGM's professional staff put into this fine spy movie shows up on the screen

Myrna Loy is a German spy on a mission to Istanbul. It is of the highest importance to Germany; the entire course of the war may depend on it. But she has met an American, George Brent, and is in love. Can she carry out her job through the haze of conflicting emotions?

Miss Loy had reached stardom through her amazing beauty, and had been cast for the last five years as exotics, and here she is again. But she had already made the switch to Americans in comedies, beginning with Frank Capra the previous year, and more important for her career at MGM, in MANHATTAN MELODRAMA and THE THIN MAN. Yet here she is at her old job, and it looks a little tired, despite the pre-code touches. Still, the MGM gloss and James Wong Howe's lighting cover up a multitude of sins. With Lionel Atwill, C. Henry Gordon, and Leo G. Carroll in his screen debut.

I watched this more for Myrna Loy than for George Brent, whom I'd always considered wooden and stolid. Imagine my surprise to see a playful, puppyish Brent, with only a few small foreshadowings of his priggish side.

Myrna Loy is even more beautiful than usual, in a series of spectacular gowns (most notably one that is backless, nearly sideless, with a front that consists mostly of a flower, two rhinestone straps, and good intentions). She plays a German counter-espionage spy, Fraulein Doktor, who is notorious in many countries for her skill at getting information. It is clear that she didn't mind using sex to do so, which must have made negotiations with the Hays Office more fraught than usual.

There was a real Fraulein Doktor, who had run a school for spies in Belgium. She was still alive when the film was made (though suffering from drug addiction in a Swiss sanitorium), so the writers and producers had to tread carefully in their depiction of her. Loy's trademark sang-froid serves her well as she jokes about missions with her boss (the excellent Lionel Atwill), manipulates targets, and deals with the smitten Brent. The plot twists and twists and then twists a final time (just when you think you've anticipated the double-crosses, there's one last to surprise you). The cautionary references to Mata Hari help ground the story in its historical context.

The cast is great fun, with Mischa Auer as an efficient aide-de-camp, Leo G Carroll as a double-agent, and the wonderfully villainous C. Henry Gordon as Fraulein Doktor's main target.

The end, however, is simply odd. One hardly knows what to make of that final scene--it seems almost like an hallucination. Its unsatisfactory cap to the movie led me to give it a lower rating than I would have otherwise.

MYRNA LOY uses her exotic beauty well as a German spy who finds herself being wooed by a persistent American medical student (GEORGE BRENT) who follows her (stalks her is more like it) until she finds herself succumbing to his charms. Their relationship, although it becomes intense, is played out with humor and wit, helped by a script that is totally unpredictable in the amount of twists and turns it takes to get to a rather abrupt conclusion.

C. HENRY GORDON has a prominent role as a Turkish commander and LIONEL ATWILL gets some humor out of his role as her boss in espionage. Loy is photographed with great care and looks exquisite in her Orry-Kelly costumes. She appears to be enjoying her role here almost as much as the "Thin Man" roles she would soon be playing opposite William Powell.

As with all espionage yarns, the plot gets thicker as things go on and anyone who dozes off will have a hard time getting back on track--that's how complicated the yarn gets before the happy ending.

All told, it's a trifle but a pleasant one in the careers of Myrna Loy and George Brent, who is a little livelier than usual in his playful role.