Une heure avant l'aube

Pacifist Franchot Tone marries émigré (!?) Veronica Lake. Franchot won't go to war. Veronica is fighting a clandestine war for Adolf Hitler. Will Franchot survive the mental trauma of THE HOUR BEFORE THE DAWN of his consciousness that fair Veronica has been up too Nazi accented no good?

Usually, a Somerset Maugham story will adapt well to the screen, and offers its actors to play a character of a little more depth than usual. While Franchot, playing a pacifist of real principles, gets a good role (and does well with it), somebody at Paramount really had it in for Veronica Lake (or, at least, her star image), and she is stuck with a cardboard Nazi to play, and, rather shockingly, some of the most convoluted hair styles ever. I guess Washington was serious, when they decreed that the Lake hairstyle (which, when imitated, allegedly got caught in factory machinery) was a threat to the war effort. Because, there is no peekaboo hair here. Just Pipp Longstocking braids, wound around her head in odd patterns.

The plot here is how a decent guy and pacifist come around to being a bomber pilot, taking the war to the Nazis. It's all rather corny, unfortunately, and some of the plot twists belong in a Repubic serial, rather than a picture that is intended to be serious.

Have done for a while highly appreciated W Somerset Maugham's work, some may find it old-fashioned but to me his sharp prose, insight and witticisms delight. Can absolutely see why his work is celebrated and do wish it was adapted more. Also have liked Veronica Lake in other things, especially in 'This Gun for Hire', 'I Married a Witch', 'The Blue Dahlia' and 'Sullivan's Travels'. Franchot Tone has also been good elsewhere, though in the right role.

Sadly, 'The Hour Before the Dawn' is not a great, or even good, representation of either or of most people involved. Even the few that come off well have done better things. The source material is a lesser Maugham effort in the first place and that is betrayed in how 'The Hour Before the Dawn' adapts it, which is pretty badly. Others have said that it is considered one of the films that started Lake's decline and while not her very worst film it is one of her worst and contains one of her worst performances.

Very few films out there are irredeemable, and 'The Hour Before the Dawn' is not an irredeemable film. It has its moments. It looks pretty good, it has a nice moody atmosphere in the lighting and in the photography as well. Have always admired Miklos Rozsa as a film composer, one of my first exposures to him being his wonderful score for Alfred Hitchcock's 'Spellboound', and it is as haunting as ever, in a way that's both eerie and melancholic.

Most of the acting was not good at all, but Binnie Barnes does a good job with the rendition of "Roll Out the Barrel" being a welcome bit of levity. The film does come to life at the end, where there is finally some energy and suspense. A shame that it took so long to get there.

Lake however was clearly taxed by her role and no it was not just her struggles with the accent. The character feels sketchy here and confuses, and Lake didn't seem to know what she was doing, sometimes resorting to histrionics and most of the time looking bored. Tone is better and his character intrigues more and confuses less, but the role needed an actor that had a lot more hard-boiled edge with Tone spending quite a lot of the time looking bemused. The rest of the acting doesn't register in one-dimensional parts. The direction is pretty pedestrian, especially in the too long to get going early portions.

The story is very dull a vast majority of the time, often uneventful and with a severe lack of tension or suspense. Further disadvantaged by over-obvious twists and a subtlety of a sledgehammer heavy-handedness. The characters completely lack depth, uncharacteristic of Maugham, with the writers clearly being at sea as to what to do with Lake's character. The script has none, or should we say very little, of Maugham's characteristic sharpness, wit, insight and sincere prose, one could easily have mistaken the film for being an adaptation of a story written by another author and an inexperienced one at that.

Overall, disappointing. 4/10

WW2 film about a conscientious objector (Franchot Tone) and his girlfriend (Veronica Lake), an ineffectual German spy. Mostly talked about today, if at all, for Lake's bad performance and how this film hurt her career. Her accent is admittedly very poor. Still, I enjoy this one. The objector plot with Tone is interesting and Lake has some exciting scenes. Good support from Binnie Barnes, Henry Stephenson, and John Sutton. The worst part of the film is the little kid played by David Leland. He would make anyone join the enemy.

Veronica Lake is the major character here, as sweet and lovely as ever, it is impossible to suspect her of anything irregular, she is perfectly adorable as an Austrian refugee having got out of Austria just in time before Anschluss and working as a governess with one of the most influential families in England, which is all on purpose. One of the sons, Franchot Tone in one of his best parts, is a conscientious objector with perfectly good reasons for it, carrying on a difficult trauma since childhood which serves as an introduction to the film, so we have to understand and respect his pacifism, even when the Second World War breaks out. He is in love with the fair governess with the irresistible German accent, and she wraps him up round her little finger, until his nephew by accident finds her out, which completely turns the tables. Somerset Maugham was one of the most expert psychological writers ever, and he was especially sharp about ladies. Franchot Tone's conversion from an inveterate pacifist to an implacable murderer and then to an Air Force pilot makes perfect sense, although he was just a teacher with the best possible merits. The film is made like an efficient thriller, but there is much more underneath which no film version can really make real or include.

In the mid 1920s, English gentlemen Jim Hetherton (Franchot Tone) meets and marries Austrian refugee, Dora Bruckmann (Veronica Lake). Little does he know that she's a Nazi sympathizer and as the years pass, she harbors dreams of German conquest.

When the Second World War approaches, Jim has difficulty because he's an avowed pacifist. What he doesn't know is that through the war his wife works to undermine her adoptive nation and she actually never loved him but chose him because he was a pacifist. After all, she and the other Nazi agents believe that they'll need useful idiots like Jim to run the newly conquered Britain. This puts Jim in a tight spot...should he be loyal to his wife or country?

Overall, while I had a bit of difficulty accepting Lake as a Nazi*, the film was a very effective propaganda piece--the sort of thing needed to encourage folks in the war effort. Well made and worth seeing.

*In her last film, a god-awful mess called "Flesh Feast", the aging Lake once again played an evil Nazi.