Sabotage à Damas

George Sanders experiences some "Action in Arabia" in this 1944 RKO film that also stars Virginia Bruce. Sanders is a reporter in Damascus who wants to find the killers of a fellow reporter. He uncovers a Nazi plot of the Germans attempting to turn the Arabs against the Allies.

It's not much, but there's some great action, and if you're a fan of George Sanders, he's at his elegant best in this, beautifully dressed and very smooth.

There are nice performances from an able supporting cast that includes Gene Lockhart, Alan Napier (that's Alfred the Butler on Batman), and H.B. Warner.

A small propaganda film, reminiscent in its way of Casablanca, but pleasant enough.

Blandly entertaining WWII spy story about George Sanders getting involved with Nazis and intrigue in Damascus. Although filmed near the end of the war, the story takes play at the outset of WWI, with the Allies and Nazis both vying for Arab support. Petty low budget and nothing all that special except for the presence of the effortlessly suave Sanders, who manages to make this film worth checking out.

The action of this film never got anywhere near the Arabian peninsula for a film titled Action In Arabia. I guess the alliteration got to the folks at RKO when they titled this film as the scene of the action is Damascus.

Which was after World War I Syria was a French mandate per the Versailles treaty. When France fell in 1940 the various colonial possessions had their own internal battles as to whether to declare loyalty to the Vichy regime or the Free French of DeGaulle. Then there were the various Arab tribes not to mention the Druse people in Syria who were not mentioned in the film all of them having their own idea on which horse to place their bets.

George Sanders is an American reporter who had been covering the backwoods theater of Iraq during World War II. He's stopping in Damascus, but he also recognizes Alan Napier as a Nazi agent on the plane with Lenore Aubert who is the daughter of influential sheik H.B. Warner. He sends a colleague with a bead on the story who unfortunately gets killed following it up.

Now Sanders is on a mission to see what's going on. With the help of Virginia Bruce and her father Gene Lockhart who we really never trust simply because its Gene Lockhart and you know the roles he's normally cast in. There's also Robert Armstrong of the American Foreign Service who's a bit thick but comes through in a crisis.

It's a decent action propaganda programmer from RKO though it should have been entitled Intrigue In Damascus.

Newspaper reporter George Sanders hurries through the airport--he's heading home from an assignment but is keeping his eyes open. In the first moments of his stay in Damascus, he encounters a number of questionable characters:

Lenore Aubert, inscrutable and beautiful in an exotic outfit complete with tall head wrap. Virginia Bruce, who hangs around the hotel looking nervous and appears to have some connection with Gene Lockhart, a gambler with dubious morals.

Robert Armstrong gets to the point as an American foreign service agent sent to keep Sanders from stirring up local mischief:

"You're a troublemaker," Armstrong tells Sanders bluntly. Sanders replies: "That's what Herr Goebbels said about me once. I was deeply flattered."

The plot is fairly straightforward. One of Sanders' colleagues is found murdered; Sanders sticks around to investigate. Soon Sanders realizes he is working to identify and thwart Nazi operatives. Determining who's who among the other players is neither simple nor safe.

Sanders is excellent--suave, clever and tough, this character is more serious-minded than the Saint or Falcon. Some good aerial photography over the desert adds excitement as the action builds.

Mystery, thriller, patriotic WWII picture....Overall, a solid and efficient production.

Action in Arabia opens with an introduction by the narrator, while displaying a boundary map of Africa, europe, and the middle east as of 1944. Starring the dashing George Sanders (from All About Eve) and Gene Lockhart, we go running around Syria looking for those Nazi's during WW II. Also look for H B Warner (who had played the great "Chang" in Lost Horizon, and JC in "King of Kings"). There has to be a lovely lady at the center of these things, and here its Virginia Bruce playing Yvonne Danesco, the wife of a crooked gambler, at the very least. People start getting knocked off, and away we go! Because we're off in a far away land, and chasing spies, its quite exotic, but according to IMDb, its mostly all filmed in LA. Scoping out the cast list, apparently Bud Wiser played "the man"...... actually, the beer WAS first; it has been around since 1883! Directed by Russian turned Frenchman Leonide Moguy, this was only one of the three English speaking films he did between 1936 and 1961. With some arabic ,german, and french language thrown in, a fun war-time adventure.