Address Unknown

Director: William Cameron Menzies Writers: Herbert Dalmas (screenplay), Kressmann Taylor (from the story by) Stars: Paul Lukas, Mady Christians, Morris Carnovsky This movie grabbed my attention right away because of its amazing cinematography. While the plot might be a little predictable, I would classify this film as "stunningly visual." A short ,quick film, but a very intense study of a man (Lukas) driven by his surroundings. Dark, moody, mysterious, and satisfying. Paul Lukas was excellent.

I very much dislike reviews which recount the plot of a film and reveal spoilers so all I will say is that this is a film worth actually watching rather than having it on while you are messing about with your phone or tablet. There are many cleverly shot scenes which mirror the action of the story and hint at shadows to come. I feel that the opening scenes are very good and authentically display the friendship between Max and Martin and their families and this of course makes the story all the more powerful. I have read the short story/book on which the film is based - it is available to borrow from the Internet Archive on line free library - and in my opinion this one if the rare occasions when the film is better than the book, largely due to the devastating end twist in the film.

***SPOILERS*** Paul Luklas as American art dealer and later, after visiting Nazi Germany, fanatical Nazi Harr Martin Schulz more or less repeats his role as the crazed but not too bright American Nazi leader Dr. Kessell in the 1939 movie "Confession of a Nazi Spy" as he throws his best friend Max Eisenstein's,Morris Carnovsky, daughter Griselle, K.T Stevens, to the wolves or the Gestapo just to show how loyal he is to the his Fuhrer-Adolph Hitler- and Fatherland-Nazi Germany. That's after Grisell the star of the play ran from the Munich theater to Martin's place chased by a mob of die hard Nazi fanatics who besides being exposed by Nazi enforcer and race inspector Charles Hatton as being Jewish they not much cared abut her rotten performance and demanded their money back. With an I don't want too get involved Martin slamming the door in her face as she pleaded for help Griselle was shot to death by the Gestapo without even being told what crime if any that she committed! Meanwhile back in the states in the city of San Francisco Martin's good friend Max gets a telegram coldly telling him his daughter, by not going into details, Griselle met an unfortunate accident by slipping in the bathtub on a bar of soap and bashing her skull in. It was Martins's son Heinrich, Peter van Eyck, who's engaged to marry Griselle who felt that there was something very fishy in her untimely death and planned to get to the bottom of it by checking out all the facts. Back in Germany Martin gets all these letters from Max that are censored by the Nazi postal service as well as Gestapo hinting that he's up to something no good and may even be an American spy. At first cutting himself off from his Jewish friend Max, to show how loyal he is to his Fatherland, Martin tries to contact him through his wife Elsa, Mandy Christians, to plead with Max not to send him any more letter that could end up with him being sent to the local Dachau concentration camp! ****SPOILERS**** Unable to stop the flow of incriminating letters and facing arrest Martin tries to blow his brains out only to chicken out at the very last minute. With the Gestapo assisted by a squad of Nazi SS storm troopers knocking at his door Martin knows that his goose is cooked but is unaware of who's the person who cooked it: His son Henrich who found out the truth behind Griselle's death and how he allowed it to happen. Who in return stuck it to him big time by, in sending him all these censored letters, turning his beloved Nazis against him.

A film released in 1944 that talks about evil Natsies in the 1930s isn't exactly cutting edge, now is it? The vaunted art direction is certainly interesting but if this movie is based on a best-selling book, the screenplay didn't do it justice, Most of the story gets told by having the lead male actors read letters from each other. Weak. The acting is try-hard Hollywood propaganda that treats the viewers like low-IQ dupes. The letter-reading and the scenes that actually move the plot along are accompanied with obvious musical accompaniment that grates the nerves before long. It's all such tiresome juvenelia. At 75 minutes it would make for a good film day during the WWII section of Grade 9 social studies.

This movie was made from a tiny, now classic 1938 book by Kressmann Taylor (her full name was Kathrine Kressmann Taylor) that was written in the form of letters only between the two lead characters. As such it is not only a brilliantly conceived horror story of how an evil idea poisons a society but how it continues on to destroy life. The small book was re-issued in 2001 by Washington Square Press and at this writing currently available. No matter how you reacted to the movie this is a must read. It can be read in a single, short sitting but it packs an incredible wallop. The little story is compared to the best writing of O. Henry for its sly plot twists and lauded by Kurt Vonnegut who compares it to WWII as what Uncle Tom's Cabin was to the Civil War. You can then return to the movie and enjoy it at a far deeper and more profound level. Beyond all of that…if Paul Lukas is in a film, any film, you can trust that it is worth watching if only for his performance.

This is a must see with all the drama coming from tiny choices that add up and how you can be seduced by evil for nominal reasons. Well worth tracking down.

A fiendishly wicked little thriller set during Hitler's rise to power. Paul Lukas is a German art dealer who's been living in San Francisco. He returns to Nazi Germany and drinks the kool aid, turning on his business partner, who stays in America, and others who are horrified about what they're hearing about their homeland. In a scene that cements how definitively he's thrown in his lot with the Nazi movement, he allows his partner's daughter and son's fiancee to be gunned down on his doorstep when he refuses to hide her from the Gestapo. But his partner, or so he thinks, exacts his revenge when he starts sending him coded messages that bring him under suspicion of the Nazis. And then there's a last-minute twist worthy of a Hitchcock film. "Address Unknown" is one of those little gems of a movie that you've never heard of and then after you've seen it wonder why. It manages to be both a serious exploration of the horrors of fascist ideology and a tense thriller with noirish overtones. Famed art director William Cameron Menzies directed the film, and while he's not credited with the art direction, you wonder if he had a major hand in it, as it's sensational, as is the off-kilter cinematography. At first I was put off a bit by the look of the film -- things are oddly framed and angles are weird. But as I got more into the film, I decided its look matched its tone and subject matter perfectly. I don't know how many shots there are of people looking small and overwhelmed by the environment around them, or of people visually imprisoned by the walls of corridors and doorways, all of which are visual metaphors for what happens to them as characters. The art direction was singled out with an Academy Award nomination in the black and white category, back in the days when there were separate awards given for black and white and color films. It's a shame the cinematography couldn't be nominated as well. The film also received a nomination for Best Dramatic or Comedy Score, courtesy of many-times-nominated Morris Stoloff and his partner on this film, Ernst Toch. Grade: A

Martin Schulz (Paul Lukas) and Max Eisenstein (Morris Carnovsky) are business partners. Martin moves to Germany with all of his family except for his eldest son Heinrich (Peter van Eyck), who stays behind to look after things in San Francisco with Max. Meanwhile, Max's daughter Griselle (KT Stevens) travels to Germany to become an actress. The families are very close and Heinrich and Griselle have future plans to marry. Once Baron von Friesche (Carl Esmond) appears on the scene, Martin goes through a change and is indoctrinated into the Nazi lifestyle. This means rejecting his Jewish friend, Max, and his friend's daughter Griselle. The story develops through letter correspondence between the two friends, Martin and Max. There are several stand out scenes, my favourites being the performance at the theatre when Griselle disobeys the Nazi authorities and the following chase that ensues in order to catch her. The acting is good, particularly from Carl Esmond. You just know that there is a nasty ulterior motive lurking behind everything that he says and does. Once Martin begins to receive coded letters, suspicion is aroused by the German censors and it's a matter of time before something happens to him... There is a twist at the end.

During WWII Hollywood produced several low budget. "Address Unknown" fits the caption.

Long before "84 Charring Cross Road", there was "Address Unknown", another film based on letters between its protagonists, but this one is very different. The correspondence is between two business partners, one Jewish and living in San Francisco, the other a German who has returned to Germany during Hitler's rise to power and who has been seduced by Nazi propaganda. The film was made in 1944 and was yet another addition to the anti-Nazi pictures being turned out at the time. It was fundamentally a B-Movie, produced and directed by the great designer William Cameron Menzies and it looks terrific, (Rudolph Mate did the stunning, noirish cinematography; this is one of the greatest black and white films ever shot). Paul Lukas, fresh from his Oscar success in "Watch on the Rhine", is the Nazi sympathiser and although the film is far from subtle it is very powerful and it has been shamefully underrated and ignored. The last section is like a nightmare out of Kafka but this nightmare is frighteningly real. Perhaps after the War people felt there was no longer any need for films like this and it simply disappeared. I think it's a small masterpiece that demands to be seen, particularly now. Absolutely unmissable if you can track it down.