Le mystère de la section 8

The plot develops with just enough direction and character development to keep a general story in focus. Seemingly standard inter-war spy movie with a beautiful female spy, threatening German spies, murder, and clean cut British agents. The cast is good with Vivien Leigh and Conrad Veidt playing their roles well. The supporting cast is like many early movies, lots of professionals with good craftwork and little fame. The production is interesting look at the period and the state of movie making. The special effects are simple, but effective for their period. Obviously, in a British film the star will be pure in the end, and can not be a German agent. However, Leigh does a good job of keeping the real situation under wraps for a while. The characters take on depth, but most drop away by the end. Only the main spies from two sides are left in the center, and the romance overcomes the effects of the war. Probably during WW2, the British film industry reflected differently on the end of the movie, but it was in the can. An interesting film: fun to watch Leigh and Veidt, and a good period piece on the politics, morays, and society in neutral Sweden in WWI.

Madeleine Goddard is a spy during WWI; she is based in neutral Stockholm, where she runs a (façade) high-fashion shop with frequent contacts with Paris. All this is certain. More uncertain is her nationality (Swiss or, as seems to be stated later in the movie, French), and, above all, which country is she working for. At the beginning it's not clear, then it appears to be Germany. Then it appears not to be Germany: and, funny fact, half the User Reviews in IMDb say she works for France, half say she works for England. I will not try to settle the question: I just wanted to make clear the confusing nature of the plot.

Baron Karl von Marwitz, a German deserter, enters Sweden: he is to become the main boyfriend of Madaleine (she had another one, before, a British one, just to add to the picture!). But wait: he is not a German deserter - we learn as the movie proceeds -, but the number-one German secret service agent in Stockholm! The couple wants to escape the horrors of the war and settle in retirement in some quiet place: Madeleine suggests the French Riviera, but.. no! There he will be on enemy land. Then they agree for Lake Garda, Italy (what?! It's enemy land for him altogether!...).

The question is somewhat settled on high sea, where, together with our heroes, a German submarine, a neutral Dutch ship (that will soon raise a British flag) and some other boats meet... The movie seems to be made in earnest, and it's not bad as for visual and filmic effects: only, it is too unnecessarily complicated. A simpler treatment would have been better. My exact rating would be 5,75: six stars are the nearest approximation.

I am always ready to make allowances for old films. Unlike others, I understand that they cannot possibly equal modern films. A film made in 1937 - what's that? 86 years ago? - cannot remotely be the same as modern films. The acting, the techincal aspects, the mindset, what was considered proper and what not, acceptable or not. That's why I have no patience with people who bleat, "it's dated ... un-pc ..." And my favorite, "It's unsuitable for our modern sensitivites." i.e. It's not woke or PC. LOL. Of course it isn't, Einstein. It was made 40, 50 - 80 years ago.

This film, while not necessarily entrancing, is not bad. You might even love it if you like oldies. There is only one thing that I found annoying and distracting. The story is supposed to happen in 1918 ... but everybody, especially the women, is dressed in glaringly 1930s fashion. Even the makeup and the haristyles. They don't even pretend to make it look like 1918. That never fails to annoy me. And the same thing happens in modern films, make no mistake. I've seen contemporary films that are allegedly set in 1960 but you'd never know it judging by the fashion. There IS something called research, you know.

I must admit that I cannot see Conrad Veldt as a romantic figure. Maybe I'm too influenced by Casablanca, I don't know. My bad, of course.

Still and all, I'd much rather watch an oldie like this one, with all its shortcomings, than the garbage Hollyweird relentlessly vomits these days. I mean, if you want to see anachronism on a grotesque level, watch any of the "period" pieces they slosh on us these days. At best you'll get a good laugh.

Vivien Leigh is even better in this film than she was in GONE WITH THE WIND. She has a fragile, hunted beauty which works perfectly for her role as the unwilling spy forced into romantic entanglements and deceptions. The story is murky, but that doesn't really matter. Watch the sequence where Vivien has been marched aboard ship and locked into her stateroom for deportment as an unwanted spy. Using just her eyes and her expression, Vivien does an entire scene of tossing in her sleep, going to the porthole, and lying back down to sleep again, showing every emotion from fear, suspicion, and doubt to acceptance of her own guilt. Then there's an explosion and she sits bolt upright, looking as fragile and unspeakably lovely as a hunted deer. This is a movie where the sheer radiance of the lead actress makes everything else seem dull by comparison.

One of the first reviews I ever did for IMDb was of The Firefly, the 1937 MGM musical that starred Allan Jones and Jeanette MacDonald. The original book of the Broadway operetta was scrapped for a plot involving espionage agents working for the exiled King of Spain and for Napoleon and they were played by MacDonald and Jones respectively.

It seems as though I may have discovered where the story came from as Dark Journey is in fact based on a couple of real life French and German agents operating during World War I. Both are stationed in neutral Stockholm and serve as conduits for intelligence for their respective governments.

Like in The Firefly both fall for each other and in the end the female uses all her feminine charms to trap the male as the British use a Trojan horse gambit as well as Vivien Leigh's considerable charms to nail Conrad Veidt. What do they do, you have to watch Dark Journey for that, but I have to say it is rather clever.

Dark Journey and Fire Over England with her then husband Laurence Olivier are the films that got Vivien Leigh her first real critical notice. Ultimately in her career which in point of fact has very few films to her credit, it led to double Academy Awards for Gone With the Wind and A Streetcar Named Desire. Her beauty is stunning in Dark Journey and no hint of the physical and mental problems that plagued her tragically all her adult life.

Conrad Veidt who escaped Nazi Germany was also making quite a mark in the British cinema. His career role there would be Jaffa in The Thief of Bagdad and later on of course as Major Stroesser in Casablanca in the USA. He made a good living playing a lot of Nazis during World War II although he was as rabidly anti-Nazi as they come. He left Germany because he had a Jewish wife. He died way too young and never saw the ultimate triumph against Hitler.

If any of you have seen The Firefly you know exactly what happens to both Leigh and Veidt. You could do a lot worse than seeing both of them back to back.