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This independent 1941 film has a sizable cast of known actors of the day. It's one of just a few films Hollywood made about Nazi espionage in the Americas. This flm is fictional, but German espionage was very real in the U. S. and Canada.

"International Lady" was released in the U. S. and the UK in mid-October of 1941. The U. S. would enter the war in less than two months, after the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. But U. S. involvement before that was extensive. It provided weapons and material for Great Britain and Russia. The U. S. supplies were crucial to the Allied war effort. They knew it, and Nazi Germany knew it. That's why German espionage worked feverishly to try to disrupt the American supply lines.

Within days after the U. S. entered the war, 33 members of the Duquesne spy ring were sentenced to death. It was organized in the late 1930s, and many of its members had civil service and government jobs. It was the largest Nazi spy ring broken up in the U. S.

This film doesn't directly name the Nazis or Germany as the enemy. The plot centers on British and American cooperation in routing a spy ring. But it also has some music, romance and comedy. The latter is in a friendly tete-a-tete between two Allied agents. Tim Hanley is an FBI agent and Reggis Oliver is from Scotland Yard. George Brent plays Hanley and Basil Rathbone plays Oliver.

Before WW II, U. S. intelligence work was done by the FBI and special offices of the Army and Navy. The British had its intelligence agencies - MI 6 and the Special Operations Executive (SOE). The American CIA didn't come into existence until after the war. It took over the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which had been set up in June 1942. So, before the U. S. entered the war, Scotland Yard and the FBI likely would have been the respective agencies of the two countries to coordinte efforts to uncover German espionage.

Ilona Massey plays Carla Nillson, a famous Norwegian singer who also was a German agent. This seems odd because Norway and its people were mosty opposed to the Nazis who had invaded ther country. Instead, Massey might have been cast as a Hungarian or Austrian singer. She was born in Hungary, and began her singing career in those countries.

Massey never achieved stardom in Hollywood, but she was a very good actress. She also had a beautiful soprano singing voice. This film has just two short scenes of her singing. She sang and starred in two Hollywood musicals that she made with Nelson Eddy. She is probably best known for those musical films - "Balalaika" of 1939, and "Northwest Outpost" of 1947.

Other prominent actors of the day in this film are Gene Lockhart, George Zucco, Frederick Worlock, Charles Brown and Clayton Moore (who played the Lone Ranger).

Before WW II, spying was something more mythical than real to an American public. But, within a few years after the end of the war, the scandals of widespread Soviet Union espionage surfaced in the U. S., Canada, and Great Britain.

The light-hearted relationship between the Brent and Rathbone characters works well for this film. It's an interesting and entertaining spy thriller with doses of light comedy, romance and some pleasant music.

A favorite line in the film is when the FBI chief is talking to an Army colonel on the phone. He says, "But that's taking a big chance." The colonel replies, "What do you think armies do?" And, when Reggis Oliver visits the FBI office with Tim Hanley, the Brit is greeted by an overly exaggerated dose of American slang of the period. FBI trainee, Bud (unlisted), says, "Scotland Yard, gee. That sorta sends me wacky. Oh, the brain said PDQ. Better breeze in." Reggis Oliver, to Tim Hanley, "He talks in code, doesn't he?"

Singer Ilona Massey is suspected of being a German spy, sending key information over the radio. Scotland Yard, in the person of Basil Rathbone, and the FBI, in the person of George Brent, investigate, even as Miss Massey and Brent make goo-goo eyes at each other. Is she a spy or an unwitting tool? Does she care about Brent? Can they crack this case?

Rathbone's character is not top notch; his salient features are befuddlement at American slang, his ability to operate solo or in cooperation with the FBI at will, and the overacting he and Brent perform in conversation; I suppose that is meant to be arch.

It's a competent enough movie under the direction of Tim Whelan. Miss Massey is stunningly beautiful and her costumes are magnificent. This was clearly intended by producer Edward Small as a major production.

The six-times married Brent led an interesting life. He had been an IRA runner before he was 16, came to the US, went back to Ireland to act with the Abbey Players, then back to the US. He started working for the Warner Brothers in 1930, what ere he became a useful leading man for their women stars; he costarred with Bette Davis in eleven movies. He died in 1979, aged 75.

American George Brent (Hanley) and Englishman Basil Rathbone (Oliver) are on the trail of Nazi spy Ilona Massey (Carla). Massey is a classical music performer who gives instructions during her performances through the phrasing of her music. It's a code that Brent and Rathbone need to help to crack as every time Massey gives a performance, the Nazis score a successful military strike on the Allied Forces aircraft capacity.

There is no mystery in this film as it is clear from the beginning that Massey is a baddie. This does not matter, though, as the film is fast-moving and keeps you watching. In fact, there may be a few sequences too many. The cast are good and it seems like a pilot film for a series starring Brent and Rathbone as they solve a different mystery together each week. It would have been a good idea as they have a chemistry that works between them. Massey reminded me slightly of Marlene Dietrich and her low-pitched voice is slightly freaky. I'm surprised that she didn't sound a bit more freakish when she sang.

Unfortunately, the copy I watched was poorly taped off the TV and had serious sound interference throughout the whole film. Overall, the film entertains while it runs its course but there's nothing too special going on.

What a pleasant surprise to accidentally tune in to this movie on late night television, a film totally unknown to me.

Ilona Massey is the sophisticated spy, Carla Nillson, in this suspenseful drama who succeeds in subtle deceptions throughout by camouflaging her real identity behind her singing engagements and exquisite good looks, a beauty that ordinarily puts her beyond suspicion. But it doesn't last. George Brent (as Tim Hanley) and Basil Rathbone (as Reggie Oliver) are federal agents who become alerted to her actions and pursue the trail of her activities.

She displays a beautiful singing voice in a few instances. It's quite ingenious of her as a spy to pass on messages of important information through her singing in a foreign language for radio broadcast during an evening soirée. Her sheet music subsequently comes under considerable scrutiny, something about sabotage, etc. and is painstakingly dissected to break the code. And so the story unfolds. Eventually she is suspected of serious incriminating activity and must face the consequences.

Ah, to be blonde and beautiful! I remember as a youngster seeing her in a comedy film where she was walking on an elevated fence wall with the wind blowing her evening gown seductively. I always thought of her as surrounded in mystery, such are the memories of a young mind.

George Brent as always plays the suave romantic lead, attentive and caring. And leave it to Basil Rathbone to get caught up in the intrigue firsthand! It's nice to see a youngish Gene Lockhart, here as Sidney Grenner, involved in the plotting and scheming.

The story does hold one's attention to the end, wondering how it will be resolved. All in all, a very good early movie prior to the onset of the war films that followed. Well worth watching.

I can only wonder why they don't have this available on video. It would be great to have it in one's collection.

George Brent and Basil Rathbone working together to debunk a Nazi sabotage enterprise to stop American help from going to England in the beginning of the war (before Pearl Harbour), being both intrigued by that lovely Hungarian singer Ilona Massey, who in the film is a Norwegian called Carla Nillson, but all her lovely songs are in Hungarian. It's actually the music which is the best in this film, beautifully composed and mainly arranged on classical pieces by Chopin and Liszt, but Ilona Massey's voice is really a wonder of beauty, like all her acting and appearance. This was before Basil Rathbone was established as the ultimate Sherlock Holmes, but George Brent is always completely reliable, whether as a hero or as a villain, but usually he was quite normal, as he is here. Of course, you could question the espionage technique going on here, appearing to be extremely advanced, but turning music into a system of code is rather far-fetched, although most intriguing and attractive, especially as the music is glorious indeed all the way through. Great entertainment with even some excitement and a few murders on the way, but of course, Ilona Massey as an international lady of exceeding culture, beauty and integrity objects from the start to any murders done for the cause.

This film is set during the time when the British were in WWII and the United States was not officially in the war. However, the US was aiding the British with the Lend Lease program...where the US rented surplus and not so surplus planes, ships and other war supplies.

The film is a spy yarn involving an American FBI agent (George Brent) and a British equivalent (Basil Rathbone). Both are investigating a Norwegian opera singer, as she seems to have some connection with a German sabotage program...and they've been destroying airplanes and ships from the US bound for the UK.

This film would have played well in Britain, and SOME Americans also would have enjoyed it because more and more Americans were of the opinion that the country would soon be pulled into the war. I say SOME because in the US, until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, quite a few Americans were pro-German. However, by 1941, Hollywood was no longer worried about alienating the pro-Germans or folks interested in neutrality...and more and more films were casting the Germans as the bad guys.

So is this film any good? Well, Brent and Rathbone was good...as you would expect. As for Ilona Massey who plays the Norwegian, she was not so wonderful...and I'll say no more about that. As far as the story goes, it's almost competently written and interesting...though having Rathbone in disguise as a waiter at the dinner party was pretty dumb. Folks at the party (both friends and foes) surely would recognize him in his flimsy getup. Also, the evil opera singer's actions through the course of the story simply make no sense at all...none. But again, the good outweighs the bad and overall it's a decent film.

In this 1941 film,Illona Massey stars as a breathtakingly beautiful musician who has the eye of about every man in the audience including a duo of British and American Agents who knows she's a Nazi Spy as they chase her through the cities of London and New York which makes the movie a must see seductive spy thriller!!

I stumbled onto this movie on YouTube and was pleasantly surprised. At heart, it's a buddy flick with George Brent and Basil Rathbone double teaming George Zucco and Gene Lockhart. It's nice to see Rathbone in a light role; I wish he'd done more comedy. Remember him killing it in "The Court Jester?" George Brent was never exciting and I wonder at his success. But Ilona Massey made up for Brent's lack of appeal. The musical secret code is an ingenious plot device that affords us a couple of songs. There's also some nifty animation to demonstrate the code breaking. One final visual treat: we get to see the Lone Ranger without his mask. The young and very beefy Clayton Moore makes several entrances. Look fast!