Le rideau de fer

Wedged between the famous Otto Preminger Film Noir LAURA and WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS and almost a decade past TOBACCO ROAD is the sublime pair-up of Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney under the direction of William A. Wellman in a Cold War Thriller at the rudimentary stages of that very thing: the movie takes place during and right after WWII and was released only three years after the war ended...

Based on the true story of "Soviet cypher-clerk Igor Gouzenko who was posted to the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa, Canada in 1943... to reveal the extent of Soviet espionage activities directed against Canada," Dana Andrews takes a sort of reverse risk since nothing's worse than an American actor caught doing a bad-hammy foreign accent, especially one as thick as Russian... And so, Dana basically speaks exactly like Dana. Meanwhile, Tierney slips in a very subtle accent and either way, both do a good enough job, making an otherwise passable programmer worth viewing: Although the real scene-stealer is Texas-born Berry Kroeger as "Paul," taking that risk and succeeding with flying colors, seeming and sounding like a Russian Orson Welles type of classy, distinguished yet nefarious thug with a scowl that's genuine, menacing and lethal...

He's the person to truly fear, for both the audience and our hero, who will eventually attempt to defect with information about Canadian spies for the Soviets. "Paul" also keeps a narrowed eye on those spies who might have lost their tight grip on the dream of communism. Berry's scenes without either Dana or Gene are beyond-effective, and provide a dark Noirish vibe when needed - as does the initial setup concerning Andrews when Russian Femme Fatale-like secretary June Havoc tests his loyalty with vodka and attempted passion.

The suspense that's supposed to occur as Andrews and Tierney, with their newborn baby in her arms and secret documents stuffed into his clothing, just isn't there as he tries locating any form of authority willing to listen to what seems like a nutcase conspiracy involving the Russian Embassy. Before that, Igor's transition is much too quick and easy; after listening to quirky, vulnerable comrade Stefan Schnabel's drunken speech against their country, he's converted as a loyal Canadian with defecting on the brain. During his most effect scenes, Dana remains the most square-jawed as a true Russian who believes in something that we, and not yet he, know will eventually change.

This little cold war story tells the tale of an ordinary man caught up in the intrigue of the atomic spy scandal of the 1940's in Canada. Working as a code clerk in the Soviet embassy in Canada Igor Gouzenko learns that atomic secrets are being forwarded to Stalin through his office. The problem for the Soviet Union is that while in Canada Gouzenko begins to realize that the government he works for and fought for is more of a threat to its people than a protector. He also realizes that the Canadians around him are decent people and no threat to his people. Then the action begins, he steals copies of the information being stolen and tries to go to the Canadian Government and press and gets nowhere. Finally, when the NKVD police from the embassy show up at his apartment and they cause such a ruckus the neighbors call the local Canadian Police the nature of the documents are revealed. One of those immortal lines is uttered by the Cop when told the papers are property of the Soviet Union;"All Stolen Property must be Identified at the Police Station". This is followed by a look by the Cop equivilent to "Go ahead,Make my day". Some might try to say this film is an anachronism and too "hawkish" but the facts are true and the fall of the Soviet Union has backed it up. The acting is by a group of "journeymen and women",the direction is as simple as that of "The Longest Day",to tell an incredible tale that no fiction writer could dream up.

One of the more realistic as well as honest post WWII movies about the threat of Communism simply because it was based on a true story. The film supports the well worn notion of truth being stranger then fiction.

Setting up a number of sleeper cells at the hight of WWII in and around the Canadian City of Ottawa the Soviet Union has developed a spying apparatus that's soon to became the biggest foreign spying network in all of North America. With the head spy a Canadian Communist named John Grubb, Barry Kroeger, having a number of his team of Soviet agents in the Atomic Research Division of the Canadian Government. Glubb and his boss' back in Moscow got wind of a secret project that the US was developing in the use of atomic energy to harness and create an nuclear chain reaction, an Atomic Bomb, that will eventually be use against the axis to end the Second World War.

The movie "The Iron Curtain" has to do with Soviet cypher clerk Igor Gouzenka, Dana Andrews, who being station in Ottawa becomes very disenchanted with his country of birth, the Soviet Union, and decides to defect. Igor is hampered with the fact that he has family back in the USSR and a wife and young child Anna & Andrei, Gene Tierney & Robin Olsen, here in Canada where goons from the Soviet NKVD, working for the Soviet Embassy, can easily get their hands on them. We see Igor go through a number of stages during his stay in Canada as he soon realizes what he's missing in not living in a free country and just how hellish his home the USSR really is.

Being a good soldier, or cypher clerk, Igor does his work smoothly and without a flaw until his wife Anna ,who with Soviet Government approval, came over to visit him from the USSR and later gets pregnant with his son. All this changes Igor's feelings about his motherland, Mother Russia, in wanting his son young Andrei to live and grow up free in a free land Canada. What really pushes Igor over the line, and gets him and his wife and son to defect, is when he gets to see his best friend Maj. Semyon Kulin, Eduard Franz, crack up while gulping down a bottle of vodka and spilling his guts out. Maj. Kulin is sorry that he ever got involved with the Bolshevik/Communist regime. Knowing now just how evil it is in it doing in Kulin's his old man a great and proud leader of the 1917 Communist, or October, Revolution has driving him to drink. They, or Uncle Joe Stalin and his gang of murderous cutthroats, felt that Kulin's father was no longer useful to them and their cause in taking over, by extreme and brutal force if necessary, the both civilized and uncivilized world and thus kicked him out of power. The old and sick guy is now left to live on his meager pension in a one room walk-up, with pop suffering from a case of sever arthritis, apartment in Moscow.

It took a lot for Igor to do what he did in going over to the other side and not only revealing what he and his cohorts, both Russian and Canadians, were up to. Igor also stole from the Soviet Embassy over 100 pages of documents revealing the Soviets plan to steal the secret of the Atomic Bomb that Igor was terrified that they, the Stalin gangsters, would use to blackmail and thus take over, by hook or by crook, the free and none-Communist world.

Igor gets away from the Soviet Secret Police, the dreaded NKVD, only because their so clumsy and confused in operating in a free, unlike their home turf the USSR, and open society. Igor then had, after almost being handed over to his countrymen by a bunch of brainless and clueless Canadian bureaucrats, himself and his wife and son, Anna & Andrei,given political asylum. Igor Gouzenka died in his adopted country Canada on June 28, 1982 at the age of 63.

The vengeful Soviet Union who had put a price on his head and had dozens of secret agents looking to both find and do Igor in had him wearing a musty and smelly hood over his head in public to keep from being recognized and assassinated. This was a small price for Igor to pay to be a free man in a free land which he wasn't back home in the USSR.

P.S The famous statement "Iron Curtain" that's been attributed to Winston Churchills speech in Fulton Missouri on March 5, 1946 was actually coined by non-other then Nazi Propaganda and Culture Minister Dr. Joesph Goebbels a year earlier in an article that he wrote for the German newspaper Das Reich. Goebbels statement was broadcast by the British BBC, on Feberuary 25, 1945 in the waning weeks of the Second World War in Europe. A broadcast that Churchill obviously heard and later used Goebbels timely phrase "Eis Erner Vorhang", the Iron Curtain in German, in his Fulton speech.

Dana Andrews is Igor Gouzenko, a Russian spy in Canada in "The Iron Curtain," a 1948 film based on a true story. Andrews plays a Russian during and after World War II who is sent to work as a code clerk for a ring in Canada; once the bomb is dropped on Hiroshima, the Communists become particularly interested in documents pertaining to it. Eventually his wife (Gene Tierney) joins him and tells him that she is pregnant. With the birth of his son, and the disillusionment of one of the ring (Eduard Franz), whose father was a great leader, Gouzenko slowly begins to realize that he's on the wrong side and decides that he and his family will not return to Russia. He steals important documents from his office with the idea of handing them over to the Department of Justice before his bosses realize what has happened, but fate plays against him. It becomes a race against time to get the documents into the right hands as well as save his family, even if he can't save himself.

Done in semi-documentary style, this is a pretty good propaganda drama with fine performances from an always attractive couple, Andrews and Tierney, and a great performance by Eduard Franz in a showy role. Andrews is one of the few leading men under contract at 20th Century Fox who was served well, particularly once Fox's biggest star, Tyrone Power, went to war; the hard-bitten roles Andrews played in many film noirs have given him a place in film history. Like both Power and John Payne, he was versatile, appearing in every type of film. Not realizing he was trained as an opera singer, the studio dubbed him in "State Fair" - they'd thrown so many non-singers into musicals, it never occurred to them he actually might be one. Alcoholism cut his star years short though he continued to work and speak on behalf of facing up to alcoholism. Tierney's career had its ups and downs due to her personal life as well, but in three films, they made a wonderful couple.

Toward the end, "The Iron Curtain" becomes quite intense and exciting. Well directed by William Wellman, it's worth watching though some may not like its definite propaganda bent.

The embellished story of Soviet defector Igor Gouzenko is told here in the documentary style that 20th Century Fox popularized in the post World War II period with such other films as The House On 92nd Street, The Street With No Name and 13 Rue Madeleine. Gouzenko is played here in tightlipped fashion for an uptight man by Dana Andrews with Mrs. Gouzenko played by frequent Andrews co-star Gene Tierney.

Gouzenko was a security code clerk at the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa and was an important conduit for top secret information both in and out of official diplomatic channels. During the Cold War it was a standard practice for the Soviets to use their embassies as places of espionage as well as diplomacy as did we. But this started during World War II when both sides were ostensibly allies.

Canada had its own role in World War II as an ally, an important supplier of troops and even more important guardian of the North Atlantic sea lanes for supplies. Their scientists worked on the Manhattan Project and the development of a super weapon certainly piqued Soviet interest. Just what were allies America and the United Kingdom working on?

When we meet Gouzenko he's a pretty firm true believer in the evangelizing mission of the Soviet state. But what was presented satirically in films like Ninotchka and Comrade X is done seriously here. The material prosperity of the west is something Andrews pretends not to notice, but Tierney isn't quite as self controlled.

The friendliness of neighbor Edna Best to Tierney and her infant son proves to be invaluable in the end. No wonder the Soviets tell Andrews to stand aloof from the ordinary Canadians. Random acts of kindness can sometimes really pay off.

A good cast of villainous types play various Soviet embassy and intelligence officials. Two should be singled out, a female seductress played by June Havoc who tests Andrews discretion and loyalty and comes up short. And Eduard Franz who plays another embassy official who becomes disillusioned with Communism and isn't so discreet about it.

For a Cold War era anti-Communist film, The Iron Curtain holds up well over 60 years later. How convenient of Winston Churchill to provide a title for this film with a famous speech in 1948.