A Hora Antes do Amanhecer

Though many people reckon that THBTD marked the start of Veronica Lake's decline, I thought that she was very good in this film, departing from the peek-a-boo image projected in her other films that I've seen. In fact I found her more attractive with her German-style hair. And some of her muted facial reactions were very good.

But I concede that this production could not be described as a career highlight for any of those involved. The backdrops showing English countryside were very basic and of the rest of the cast I knew only Franchot Tone. And the three main settings - the big house, the airfield and the farm buildings seemed to be extremely close together.

The plot was fair enough, though I did wonder about how one character ended up where he did given his action at the end of the film.

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.

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.

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.

Surely not the greatest antiwar picture ever made but hardly as bad as its reputation suggests.

Veronica is a Nazi agent pretending to be an exile from her country who has managed to wheedle her way into wealthy Binnie Barnes good graces. As Binnie's personal maid she manages to also ingratiate herself with the prestigious and politically connected family Binnie has married into. Their pacifist son, Franchot Tone, falls for her which she again uses to her advantage when the cell she's involved in call on her to strike.

Not a top notch Maugham adaptation but it tells its wartime story efficiently, if with a minimum of action. Veronica's career took a big hit when this failed at the box office with the critics and studio assigning most of the blame to her. Hard to see why though.

She's not as assured as in her best films but she doesn't embarrass herself. Her accent is variable but you'll have definitely heard worse in other films and the lack of her signature hairstyle can be laid at the feet of the government's request for her to change it. It was during the filming of this picture that she tripped over a cable causing a miscarriage and her absence from the screen for a period of time. With the failure of this film and no immediate one to follow it up and regain ground the studio apparently lost faith in her and started casting her in fluffy junk that quickly lead to her career default. It surely didn't help that she had a reputation for being difficult, stemming from an untreated bi-polar disorder, and was unpopular at Paramount. A shame though since even miscast as she is here she still has a powerful screen presence and holds the viewers eye whenever she's in a scene.

As for the rest of the film, Tone and the always welcome Binnie Barnes make the most of their parts but the direction lacks focus which even with the short running time allows the film to become slack at times.