Le miroir au secret

Do you remember "the thirty-nine steps"?Do you remember Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll chained together by handcuffs ?Sterling Hayden and Ruth Roman (who was in Hitchcock's "strangers on a train") have the same misadventure;besides,the doctor and the nurse who "take care" of Mrs Nicholson recall Claude Rains and his mother poisoning Ingrid Bergman in "notorious".It goes without saying that "5 paces to danger" is Hitchcockesque to the core.The plot is bizarre but the two leads make a good pairing and the film ,which begins as a road movie ,then features an almost irrelevant flashback in Germany to continue as a spy thriller ,is rather entertaining.Best scene comes at the end when they visit the so called Kessel in the base: we feel something odd in the air and the bag is a good trick.

When his car breaks down during a trip from Los Angeles to Texas, John Emmett (Sterling Hayden) meets another motorist, Ann Nicholson (Ruth Roman), who offers him a lift. He learns that she is running away from her physician, Dr. Simmons (Werner Klemperer), and the police, who want to question her about a murdered Central Intelligence Agent in Los Angeles.

Werner Klemperer? The CIA? Murder? Oh yes. While this is not one of those big budget thrillers or spy stories, it is not a bad one. You like independent film, do you not? Well, this is what it looked like in the 1950s, when you worked outside the studio system.

Let's get this out of the way. IMDb and the film itself do not credit a young Jack Elam as the thug Harry, who fails to do away with the principal characters. One of the spies later refers to him as "Harry". Elam looks almost ruggedly handsome here, not the messy, bugeyed, snaggletoothed psychotic he often portrayed in later years.

The real problem with this noirish road film is that the script is severely weakened from the plot and dialog of the novel "The Steel Mirror" by Donald Hamilton. The original novel had a very intricate plot that included psychological amnesia, guilt as a result of betrayal of resistance fighters in France in World WAr II, more fleshed out characters and motivations, etc. Kessler, the producer, director, and screenwriter failed to make anything of his material leaving the actors trying to salvage a dull script. Had this film been done by one of the noir specialists of the 40s it probably would have been a different film. If you can hunt down Hamilton's original version it is a fine read. I salute Sterling Hayden, Ruth Roman, and Werner Klemperer for their efforts.

Low-budget but suspenseful Cold War yarn, with Sterling Hayden & Ruth Roman. Hayden is gruff John Emmett, whose car breaks down in California on his road to nowhere (supposedly en route to visit his folks in Texas). The suspiciously friendly Ann Nicholson (Roman) offers Emmett a lift, as long as he'll drive some. She's going to New Mexico.

Along the way, her psychiatrist (the future Col. Klink, Werner Klemperer) & his nurse pop up; with sundry likewise suspicious characters: cops, a university dean, CIA, FBI (Ken "Festus" Curtis), & hired killers. Ann's carrying missile secrets, which are carved into a ladies' mirror. There's a fine sudden twist to the showdown with the guy for whom the missile secrets are meant.

For a low-budget thriller, the acting's surprisingly low-key. Hayden does restrained bewilderment very well: quite contrary to his lead role in "The Killing," a couple years before. Roman is also restrained in her role as a suspected spy, with secrets of her own culled from both sides of the globe. As our Dad used to say, "A goody to see again!"

Sterling Hayden runs the show in this pretty entertaining late noir. He plays a man who finds himself helping, and marrying, a woman (Ruth Roman) who's been targeted by Russian spies and who's trying to get some stolen information in the hands of the American government. I saw this on TCM as part of a Ruth Roman tribute, and she's pretty good, and even gets a chance to be sharp and clever herself rather than wait around for a man to save her, but she's no match, nor is anyone else, for Hayden's gruff and macho screen presence. It also helps that he literally towers over every other actor in the movie.

Like many noirs from the 1950s, "5 Steps to Danger" is rife with paranoia and suspicion about Russia's potential for attacking the U. S., one of hundreds of films that were the product of the Cold War.

Grade: B+