Le mystère de la section 8

I watched this movie late late late one night and it really caught me off guard. I missed the opening credits and at first thought it was some early Hitchcock movie that for some reason I had never heard of. It has some Hitchcock-esque bits from the snappy dialogue in tense situations, a rich supporting cast, bits in a music hall etc but of course it's not Hitchcock. It's Vivien Leigh, who is massively hot as usual, playing a double spy and falling in love with some creepy German guy. I kept expecting a vaguely handsome, stalwart American hero type to nab her but she actually fell for the German, who was ostensibly a bad guy. I guess 3 years later it would have been impossible to make this film but in 1937 it was ok.

As I said, great supporting cast, solid turn by the leads, nice script and tight directing. unfortunately the love story is not as well rendered as it could have been (their exchanges are a bit too arch for my taste), the suspense never really builds to a crescendo and the effects in the end naval engagement certainly do not hold up well but overall it's still a pretty good film.

There's not really much to this amuse-bouche of two espionage agents in Sweden during World War I. The German agent, the sophisticated and aristocratic Conrad Veidt, and the pouting delicate French agent, Vivien Leigh, are both quite good. I don't find Conrad Veidt particularly handsome but he has some properties that seem to appeal to women -- tall, polite, unspeakably rich, unflappable, and speaks with a Continental accent. He wears a monocle too, as if the rest weren't enough. I don't find him attractive but I'd like to be him.

Vivien Leigh is is a genuine stunner. There isn't a plane of her features or an angle of the camera that detracts from her beauty. She can act too. Here, she changes from curt and business-like to winsome and yearning, and she does it convincingly. Years later, as Blanche DuBois, she swooped around dressed in frills and slowly going mad in New Orleans' French Quarter. As a worn-out Southern belle, she was just as convincing. She had the misfortune of suffering for years from a disabling bipolar disorder and finally the tuberculosis that killed her.

The set design is noticeably good, even extravagant in the dining room scenes. They're enough to make any normal man's mouth water -- sitting across from a lovely woman in a fancy restaurant, drinking champagne and dreaming of Aphrodite. Yum.

The story itself left me confused. Let's see. We're most often in Stockholm during the war. There are German spies. There are French spies. There are British spies. And all of them seem to be spying on each other. It sounds practically MODERN. Vivien Leigh is a French agent. But why is she smuggling information from Paris to Sweden of all places? Why does the French spy network in Stockholm give a damn about the next German offensive. And who do they transmit it to -- French headquarters in Paris? And why does Leigh's comic janitor send secret semaphore signals out his window to someone else? When the broth is reduced, you have a tale of two lovers representing conflicting ideologies and the good one wins. "Ninotchka" did it with more flair but the intent, of course, was different. In 1937 no one in Britain was laughing much about Germany or Hitler's shenanigans.

It's in no way a bad movie. Some of the dialog is keen. In the Leigh's boutique, a dresser and a rich man's mistress have a brief exchange. Paramour: "Some men just like to buy a girl everything." Dresser: "With a girl like you, it's easy to understand why." Both the ladies giggle -- and then the mistress's grin turns into a nasty frown. Well, it loses something when it's put into print.

Cinema uber villain Conrad Veidt and delicate Vivien Leigh make for an odd but absorbing couple as spies on opposite sides in this suspense romance. Veidt's nefarious allure and usual commitment to cruelty is tempered long enough to get the attention of Miss Leigh and it gives the somewhat convoluted (she's a double agent) story a suspense that sustains itself up until the final moments.

Madeline Goddard (Leigh) poses as a Stockholm dress shop owner while spying for Germany in neutral Sweden. Baron Karl Von Marwitz (Veidt) arrives in Stockholm to put the war behind him and live an epicurean existence of wine women and song. He also is merely posing. Goddard and Marwitz eventually become entangled and the passion between the two distracts them momentarily from their assignments which is to expose each other.

Veidt and Leigh have some excellent scenes together fraught with suspense and romance as they parry back and forth using charm and suspicion for weapons. In spite of their contrasting stature they display a nice change of pace chemistry with director Victor Seville maintaining a degree of ambiguity with both leads late into the film as they struggle with duty and desire.

There's a rousing gun battle between a sub and disguised transport in the finale with a somewhat schmaltzy climax that hinders the film, but Veidt and Leigh create enough fireworks of their own to make Desperate Journey worth the watch.

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.

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.