Peter Lorre and "The Mask of Dimitrios"

Turner Classic Movies has been running a string of classic film noir these past weeks, and here the DVR button comes in useful. Last night I watched The Mask of Dimitrios (1944), and found myself tangled up in a web of mystery, spies, dark alleys, continental trains, seedy hotels and flats, and murderous intentions. The time period is late 1930s, although no expectations of a forthcoming world war are indicated. Hungarian actor, Peter Lorre, playing against his usual sinister type is a meek Dutch novelist who is required to travel by train to locales we are now familiar with because of current American foreign intrigues--from Athens to Istanbul to Sofia, Belgrade and Paris. The film was actually made on Warner Brothers' Hollywood back lot but they did a good job of making you think you're in Europe. Sidney Greenstreet, the large stout Englishman who often performed with Lorre is the master crook and in their scenes together they regularly upstage each other as they did in other films including Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon. Lorre usually plays creepy criminals, so it's quite interesting to see him play nice for a change. Except for Faye Emerson as femme fatale (she was married for a while to FDR's son. FDR Jr.) and Zachary Scott, the handsome Hollywood actor who managed to project sleaze and danger at the same time, the other actors are mostly European--and when you look at the credits you're reminded how Hollywood became a refuge in the 1930s and 40s for a large number of Jewish European artists, composers, actors, technicians, directors, etc. who fled from Germany in the 1930s and found work in California. Peter Lorre was one of them.

The Mask of Dimitrios was adapted from a novel by Eric Ambler.