Today, British director Carol Reed's reputation rests primarily on The Third Man, the 1950 post-war thriller in which Joseph Cotton and Orson Welles joined an international cast in the sewers of Vienna in the creation of a cinema classic. But Reed created at least two more masterpieces with The Fallen Idol and Odd Man Out, as well as a number of other fine but lesser-known films, produce both before and after his late '40s peak.
Night Train to Munich is a delirious ride, a curious hybrid of espionage thriller, Allied propaganda and screwball comedy, in which Nazis pursue a Czech scientist and his daughter from Prague to England to a precarious tram in the Swiss Alps. Rarely seen today, it was quite a success upon its release in 1940, its wry wit, sly sexual innuendo and absurdist cloak-and-dagger romance taking viewers on a stylish and ironic — if low-budget — tour through a series of genre conventions. Rex Harrison is suave and sarcastic, if a bit smarmy; Paul Henreid turns his heroic image on its head; and Margaret Lockwood maintains her beauty, humor and poise throughout a parade of plot twists.
Criterion's new DVD and BluRay editions of the film include an essay by film critic Philip Kemp and a conversation between film scholars Peter Evans and Bruce Babbington regarding Carol Reed, Night Train screenwriters, Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, and the film's social and political context.
1940. 90 minutes. $29.95. www.criterion.com.
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