Slow to start but gathers pace. Many scenes were later copied & became cliches .I liked the plane crash-well done & although it was propaganda at the end,it was
throughly enjoyable.
This spy thriller starts off slow but more than makes up for it with multiple exciting set pieces later on. However it is odd that Joel McCrea drops out of the story at one point and George Sanders takes over as the hero. It made me realise I would rather watch Sanders.
With the war on in Europe and the American public largely disinterested, the legion of expats and Jews in Hollywood worked to turn public opinion towards entering the war against Germany.
Hitchcock made the first of his American films that was in the style of his British work, a picaresque suspense thriller, with comedy and superb visual touches. It is even set mostly in England, as an American reporter chases down a key Dutch diplomat Van Meer, who has been kidnapped by terrorists.
Joel McCrea and Laraine Day are a touch inoffensive as the leads, but there is good support and when Edmund Gwenn is on screen performing an adorable cameo, we could be back with Hitch at Gaumont. For once George Sanders gets to play a hero not a heel.
It treads water badly at halfway (and Hitch would have got this done half an hour sooner in the UK), but it recovers well with an exciting and well staged plane crash at sea. I'm not sure this still stands up as one of the Master's most suspenseful thrillers, but it is packed with wonderful images, like the chase of the would be assassin of Van Meer viewed from above through a sea of umbrellas. Nazi Minister of information Joseph Goebbels called this a masterpiece of propaganda.