La grande menace

Original title: Walk a Crooked Mile

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

Louise Allbritton, Louis Hayward, and Dennis O'Keefe in La grande menace (1948)

During the Cold War, at a California atomic research plant, an FBI agent and a Scotland Yard inspector join forces to eliminate a foreign atomic spy ring operating in the USA and the UK.During the Cold War, at a California atomic research plant, an FBI agent and a Scotland Yard inspector join forces to eliminate a foreign atomic spy ring operating in the USA and the UK.During the Cold War, at a California atomic research plant, an FBI agent and a Scotland Yard inspector join forces to eliminate a foreign atomic spy ring operating in the USA and the UK.

Director
- Gordon Douglas
Writers
- George Bruce
- Bertram Millhauser
Stars

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

6.3/10

1.2K

YOUR RATING

Director
- Gordon Douglas
Writers
- George Bruce
- Bertram Millhauser
Stars

See production info at IMDbPro

Trivia
Even though the film was about the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover would not sanction it because Producer Edward Small refused to allow the FBI to interfere with production and review the film prior to its release.

Goofs
Like so many other characters in crime stories, Grayson made what could have been a dangerous mistake when he didn't wash his hands after handling the poisoned glass in von Stolb's quarters. He picked it up from the inside to avoid smudging fingerprints, but because the glass contained residue from the deadly poison, the residue would have remained on his hands.

Quotes
Philip 'Scotty' Grayson: Hmmm. You know Braun could be a pretty fair painter...
Daniel F. O'Hara: Yes, if there wasn't so much red in his work.

Crazy credits
Narrator Reed Hadley is billed in the opening titles--unusual in an era when narrators generally were not credited, often even when they were famous.

Connections
Remade as David Harding, Counterspy (1950)

User reviews37

Featured review

Hollywood Gears Up for the Cold War

Well-made political thriller. 1948 is the year Hollywood joined the anti-communist crusade, and there's no mistaking the bad guys-- Raymond Burr in a Lenin-like goatee, a sinister gathering of "comrades", and Hollywood's version of commie rhetoric about how the individual doesn't matter in the global scheme of things. Up to that point, the studios had been turning out generally pro-Soviet films in behalf of our WWII allies. But now, turning on a dime, we find out what perfidious characters we had been supporting. Oh well, as they say, in politics there are no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests.

Square-jawed Dennis O'Keefe makes for a dogged and intrepid FBI agent aided by Scotland Yard loan-out Louis Hayward. Together, they show what sterling fellows the English-speaking world turns out. They're on the trail of a covert Soviet spy sneaking out secrets from what is likely a bomb designing laboratory, though it's never specified. The plot rather prophetically anticipates the Klaus Fuchs affair of 1949, when the German-born spy was exposed as smuggling A-bomb secrets to the Soviets as early as 1945.

The suspense revolves around who the lab spy is and how he's getting the secrets out. It makes for entertaining, if workman-like, viewing. The familiar narrator Reed Hadley lends stentorian authority, along with some fine location photography. Together they impart a sense of reality to what are otherwise standard stereotypes and a melodramatic plot. Sure it's Hollywood's manipulative brand of political cinema, this time turned on our former friends. But at least it's watchable, minus the kind of cold-war hysteria that came to characterize other efforts of the period. All in all, an interesting and revealing reflection of its time.