This film is probably best-known as the first Hollywood feature to openly vilify the German Nazi regime, noticeably doing so even before the formal declaration of European hostilities in September later the same year.
Kudos then to Warner Brothers for going out on a limb while other studios, perhaps with their eyes on lucrative U. S. German relations, demurred. The film itself, it's fair to say, is more run-of-the-mill as movie entertainment goes and it's not difficult to imagine the plot being transcribed from a routine gangster flick of the time, but it's worth viewing for the capable direction by Anatole Litvak, his trademark use of montage one again prominent and the heft given to it by the casting of Edward G Robinson as a crusading F. B. I. Agent in what almost looks like a dry run for his insurance company inspector in Wilder's "Double Indemnity" a few years later, although you do have to wait a full forty minutes for him to make his first appearance.
Before that, we're introduced to a small representation of the reputed several spies and conspirators supposedly working for Germany in plain sight throughout America, their true purposes concealed while they integrate themselves into society as the enemy within and gain employment in munitions and the military.
The narrative is punctured throughout by stentorian Reuter's / Pathé newsreel-type announcements which serve both as news commentary and public service warnings to reinforce the coming peril and apart from making no reference to the Nazi purge of the Jewish people, pulls few punches in its denunciation of Hitler and Goebbels personally, the German invasions of Czechoslovakia and Austria and depicting the sinister operations and thuggish tendencies of the Gestapo.
The message, well-intentioned as it is, probably gets in the way of the story as we see small-fry pro-German agitators taken down by age-old weaknesses to money and sex, while later there are lengthy courtroom speeches espousing truth, justice and the American way just to ensure the message hits home. Robinson is committed in his role as the determined, foxy (Renard, get it?) investigator and George Sanders, in a remarkable Aryan-style haircut, makes an impression as an admittedly stereotypical strutting, jackbooted paymaster, while Francis Lederer, Paul Lukas and Dorothy Tree all convince in their parts as subterfuge cogs in the Nazi wheel.
Like I said, more noteworthy perhaps for the message it carried than as a great example of Hollywood movie-making, it's nevertheless to be praised for taking a stand at a time when a sizeable number of isolationists at the time in the States were recommending a course of non-intervention.
Kudos then to Warner Brothers for going out on a limb while other studios, perhaps with their eyes on lucrative U. S. German relations, demurred. The film itself, it's fair to say, is more run-of-the-mill as movie entertainment goes and it's not difficult to imagine the plot being transcribed from a routine gangster flick of the time, but it's worth viewing for the capable direction by Anatole Litvak, his trademark use of montage one again prominent and the heft given to it by the casting of Edward G Robinson as a crusading F. B. I. Agent in what almost looks like a dry run for his insurance company inspector in Wilder's "Double Indemnity" a few years later, although you do have to wait a full forty minutes for him to make his first appearance.
Before that, we're introduced to a small representation of the reputed several spies and conspirators supposedly working for Germany in plain sight throughout America, their true purposes concealed while they integrate themselves into society as the enemy within and gain employment in munitions and the military.
The narrative is punctured throughout by stentorian Reuter's / Pathé newsreel-type announcements which serve both as news commentary and public service warnings to reinforce the coming peril and apart from making no reference to the Nazi purge of the Jewish people, pulls few punches in its denunciation of Hitler and Goebbels personally, the German invasions of Czechoslovakia and Austria and depicting the sinister operations and thuggish tendencies of the Gestapo.
The message, well-intentioned as it is, probably gets in the way of the story as we see small-fry pro-German agitators taken down by age-old weaknesses to money and sex, while later there are lengthy courtroom speeches espousing truth, justice and the American way just to ensure the message hits home. Robinson is committed in his role as the determined, foxy (Renard, get it?) investigator and George Sanders, in a remarkable Aryan-style haircut, makes an impression as an admittedly stereotypical strutting, jackbooted paymaster, while Francis Lederer, Paul Lukas and Dorothy Tree all convince in their parts as subterfuge cogs in the Nazi wheel.
Like I said, more noteworthy perhaps for the message it carried than as a great example of Hollywood movie-making, it's nevertheless to be praised for taking a stand at a time when a sizeable number of isolationists at the time in the States were recommending a course of non-intervention.