Voyage au pays de la peur

`Journey Into Fear' certainly has an Orson Welles look. Although he received neither directing nor writing credit (credit went to Norman Foster and Joseph Cotten, respectively), I think that most of what is there is his. The problem is that there is not enough there there. The on-board relationships should have been developed more. All of them seem perfunctory.

Combining the shooting by a good marksman who misses his target and stalking him in the nightclub are combined into an altogether more satisfying single event.The escape from the Nazis is more protracted and less violent than in Eric Ambler's book. It is very noirish and photogenic, and the combination of wet chase and the presence of a murky character played by Orson Welles and an all-American one played by Joseph Cotten prefigure `The Third Man.' Joseph Cotten had some of the same American innocence and ready outrage in both films. He's an important munitions engineer here and a hack western writing there. He doesn't get the dark beauty (Alida Valli or Dolores del Rio) in either, though he has and keeps a wife in `Journey.'

The film probably makes sense to those unfamiliar with the book (and such viewers aren't distracted by thinking about what's been changed). It is suspenseful even for someone like me who recently read the book

Somewhere along the way, someone took scissors to this film and left it with plot holes that don't connect. Despite the obvious flaws in continuity and plotting, Eric Ambler's novel has been so changed in transferring it to the screen that he didn't even recognize it as his own story, according to Robert Osborne of TCM.

The marquee value of Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles is likely to lure viewers into thinking they will see another classic along the lines of THE THIRD MAN. Not so. This is a visually interesting espionage yarn, very little of which is coherent and much of which leaves the viewer in as much confusion as Joseph Cotten's character is. Whom should he trust and who is really trying to kill him?

Cotten plays a U.S. Naval engineer aboard a dilapidated freighter who learns that Nazi agents are planning to kill him. The usual Welles Mercury Theater players fill the supporting roles, along with the beautiful Dolores Del Rio. Once the film leaves the claustrophobic freighter and shows Cotten running from his captors, it takes on heightened interest. The scenes in the torrential rain are wonderfully staged and the B&W cinematography gives the illusion of menace in every shadow.

But there is virtually no coherent plot and Welles is completely wasted in a small role that he underplays. While the credits say that Norman Foster directed, it is highly probable that Welles himself directed much of it. Perhaps it all made more sense before the running time was cut down to 71 minutes.

Ruth Warrick has a couple of nice moments as Cotten's patient wife but none of the characters are fleshed out enough to really understand or care about. Cotten gives his usual workmanlike performance but it all ends with a rather abrupt finish, much ado about nothing.

Too many weaknesses to call a classic.

Orson Welles graciously denied having any directing role in Norman Foster's 'Journey into Fear (1943),' though his influence appears to be all over it. 'Citizen Kane (1941)' first showcased Welles' fondness for filming people via low and high-angled cameras, a stylistic technique that distorts statures, placing the audience in a position either of power or helplessness. Here, the talented Karl Struss – who also worked on such films as 'Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)' and 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)' – employs similar techniques, capturing human faces with a threatening immediacy that distorts their features and suggests imminent danger. You won't, of course, fail to notice that the film's cast also boasts more than a few Welles regulars, mostly members of his Mercury Theatre team – Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead, Everett Sloane, Ruth Warrick and Welles himself. The film's screenplay was written by Cotten, his sole attempt at writing {outside some uncredited work on 'The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)'}, a pity since the dialogue is frequently crisp, intelligent and memorable.

'Journey into Fear' is one of those rare WWII-themed films of the early 1940s that you wouldn't automatically class as propaganda. Indeed, the Nazis are only mentioned in passing, and the sinister agents who attempt to assassinate Cotten could just as easily be motivated by reasons other than war. Much of the story takes place on a small passenger ship, on which American engineer Howard Graham (Cotten) seeks refuge from German assassins, who are hell-bent on delaying his return home with important Allied intelligence. Silent enemy Peter Banat (played by Welles' agent, Jack Moss) watches ominously from across the ship's cabin, never saying a word, but suggesting sadistic menace through every dryly-amused smirk. Cotten is strong in the lead role, playing Graham as a frightened and confused amateur, a role reminiscent of Holly Martins from 'The Third Man (1949),' rather than the experienced and resourceful American spy we would otherwise expect in such a film. Welles lends his mighty presence to the role of the Turkish Colonel Haki, though he is noticeably more subdued than usual.

In one final manner, 'Journey into Evil' is very much like an Orson Welles film: it was re-edited at the studio's request. According to some sources, Welles did some of the trimming himself, recutting the final reel and adding Joseph Cotten's rather awkward narration. At just 68 minutes in length, the film certainly feels as though it has been tampered with. The relationship between Graham and Rosette (Dolores del Rio) is brief and poorly explored, and certainly not worthy of the repeated reassurances that the former frequently bestows upon his anxious wife (Ruth Warrick); there's little indication that the their affiliation extended beyond exchanging a few harmless pleasantries. Though the film doesn't exactly feel incomplete – as did a noir like Renoir's 'The Woman on the Beach (1947)' – the bare-bones narrative gives the sense of a minor and inconsequential work. Even so, 'Journey into Evil' is well worth seeking out for its terrific photography – including a superb climax on the slippery ledges of a hotel exterior – and the talents of a very talented cast.

The operatic approach of adding a musical dimension to menace with a killer-theme on the soundtrack has been greatly used in Orson Welles' glorious suspense film, "Journey Into Fear," where the little killer obsessively played a scratchy old 78 rpm disc of someone singing "Chagrin d'Amour."

The assassin was short and fat; his belly large, his chin and neck flabby... I do not recall him having a line of dialog to speak… But the whole film was spread with heightened menace when he sat, his little round eyes blank behind his little round pebble lenses, listening compulsively to the atrociously scratchy record, confusing the words of the song at the wrong speed, the needle jumping from groove to groove; his nerve-ends, unlike ours, immune to the discordance…

This was a spy thriller set in the wartime Near East, about an innocent American engineer (Joseph Cotten), pursued by Nazi agents and blundering from danger to danger without seeming to know too much of what it was all about…It was essentially a hunter-and-hunted story, with settings that were often seedy but always exotic…

The opening was in Istanbul, the climax in Batum, and all the terrors between were forced claustrophobically between the low ceilings and narrow partitions of a neglected little steamer plowing the Black Sea…

"Journey Into Fear" lives for its portrait gallery, its atmosphere, and for Welles' touches and excesses

While returning from a conference munitions expert Joseph Cotten and his wife Ruth Warrick are taken to a nightclub in Istanbul by the mysterious Edward Sloane where Cotten is almost killed. Magician Hans Conreid is a victim of his own slight of hand, but it's Cotten who's the target as Orson Welles as the Turkish police inspector deduces.

Welles's solution get Cotten out of the country so if he's killed at least it won't be on his watch. Welles books passage on a tramp freighter for Cotten and the freighter is loaded with highly interesting characters, one of whom at least is a Nazi assassin.

This was another Mercury Theater production with most of the regulars from Citizen Kane/The Magnificent Ambersons back again. Welles's police inspector is a small, but crucial part of the story.

Welles, for whatever reason is being unduly modest. Journey Into Fear is undoubtedly the greatest film that Orson Welles never took credit for directing. I can find certain touches here from Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, and The Stranger. If he didn't officially direct you can take it to the bank that Norman Foster knew exactly what Welles was trying to get out of each and every scene.

Look also here for a good performance by Mexican cinema great Dolores Del Rio as a most mysterious femme fatale on the freighter.

Journey Into Fear is a short film, slightly less than 70 minutes running time. I'm sure that RKO had it playing at the bottom end of double features. Maybe we'll see a 'director's cut' of this one day and know what Welles's own perspective was.