Passport to Treason

Rod Cameron certainly is no Bogart and rather make an impression like Fred MacMurray all miscast and out of place in the fogs of London, where he gets kidnapped and drugged with some bogus truth serum while he nevertheless only can produce mumbles, that will not satisfy the hoodlum gang he has run into, which proves to be some international fascist league working under cover of some impeccable peace organization - there will be no peace here, only hard knuckles, murders and gunfire. The film is saved by Lois Maxwell who works on both sides, employed as a secretary by the organization and supplying the police with information. The Italians are interesting here, caught in the spiral of organized crime and trying desperately to get away, one after the other getting caught in the slaughter. It's a bleak copy of more organized noir films, there is not even much cinematography here except for the fog, and Rod Cameron will make you yawn when he doesn't use his knuckles. The story is weak routine stuff, you have seen it all before, while only Lois Maxwell is interesting.

Blimey how boring can a film get. One of the most wooden leading men in anything I can remember. And despite several other reviewers say so, a Canadian not an American I understand. Why was it thought such a good idea to import these awful overseas actors when any number of Brits could have played them so much better.

The story veered all over the place, and what might read well in a book, certainly didn't work as a film. And what exactly was the great threat to this country, the world, or wherever it was meant to be. I'm struggling to find enough required words to get this approved, never mind to offer further comment.

In the 1950s it was quite popular in this country to import fading American stars to give the film a bit of a boost at the box office here and to give the film a chance of being sold to a distributor in America.It has to be said that there seems to be a line of descent for American actors.Starting out as leading men,then gravitating to Westerns and then making the trip over to the UK to give films a boost for reasons stated above.However films like this really did not have much chance in any territory.the problem is that for a film of fairly modest ambitions it is really over plotted.You just tend to loose interest in the whole thing after about 20 minutes.So not really worth bothering with.

Lois Maxwell was still working in the field in Berman & Baker's final Cold War quickie for Tempean; the Moneypenny role taken on by Marianne Stone (just before her nose job) in a more substantial and good-humoured role than she usually got to play.

Passport to Treason (1956)

Boy is this an obvious attempt to be something that it can't quite be. That is, it's a low budget off-beat British movie with an American main character acting like a tough film noir detective. The London fog is thick, the femme fatale (in a nightclub) is cool and mysterious, the police are bothered but mostly clueless, and a crew of Italians are interfering with some kind of anti-peace movement. It even starts with a voice-over, at night, with a laconic world weariness that Bogart made so famous in a couple of his early detective thrillers for Warner Bros.

"Passport to Treason" is moody and not terrible, but if you like all the usual touch points of an American detective noir, you'd be better of with the real deal, of which there are so many better ones, even low budget ones like this. But for now, here we are, and the dark drama is enough to keep things going much of the time. Of course, it would help to have a compelling main character, and the large, deep voiced detective is played by a bit of a bore, Rod Cameron. He has the voice and pace of Lon Chaney Jr. without the sympathetic aura. Of course, since he's American he can take out three well prepared Italian thugs in a warehouse without any trouble, and he can solve the crime even the police don't quite know how to get at.

The main trick is that Cameron's character has stepped into another detective's shoes. So it starts with a deception. Then the Italians try some kind of mind control, coming out of the brainwashing scares of the Korean War I suppose. And at first he works for one client, then another, never quite getting paid for all his back and forth. And behind it all is an international underground group working for world peace. That's right. It's a noble but slightly abstract idea, maybe more tangible in Europe in the 50s than here, then or now, in the U.S. But it's hard to get involved. Eventually things resolve, and that's that.

Honestly, what is really interesting here is just the way a film noir cliché translates into a British realm. The cars and accents are different, but so is a certain feel to the actors and their style. Don't expect much.