The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Singing an ode to O.S.S. right after the end of WWII, Fritz Lang's black-and-white Hollywood espionage thriller a bit more piquant than an adequate potboiler thanks to a dapper Gary Cooper valiantly takes on the role of Prof. Alvah Jesper, a scientist-turned-amateur-spy, ham-handed but always bullish on the prospects. During the heyday of WWII, knowing that his former colleague, the distinguished nuclear scientist Katerin Lodor (Thimig) is working for Germany, fellow scientist Mr. Jesper volunteers to touch base with her in Switzerland and tries to dissuade her from her involvement, but a tenderfoot Jesper bungles the mission and Katerin is dispatched in the action, chastened by the aftermath, he is given a second chance to rescue another scientist, the Italian professor Polda (Sokoloff) in Rome who is under rigorous surveillance by the Gestapos, the situation is more exacting and parlous notwithstanding, Jesper doesn't refrain from taking his chance to woo Gina (Palmer), a hardened partisan fighter, and slowly makes her thaw out from a bitter and cynical facade, before a final smack-down lurking near the coda and not everyone is able to get out to see the daylight. Truth to be told, this pre-Bond spy flick is too anodyne and mawkish albeit Mr. Lang's handsome mise-en-scène shimmering with a quintessential noir-ish luster, the most riveting moment is a black cat's scare in the darkness, but the tension soon is eclipsed by the romantic pas-de-deux, tentatively burrowing into the mental hardship in wartime through Gina's wounded psyche, and Ms. Palmer doesn't make her Gina sitting and pining in a thankless love interest role, that is something bracing to watch. Max Steiner's full-blown score is sonorous but effective, and the fitful fistfight actions are primordially unconvincing, but, on a brighter side, one can hardly resist the charm of a come-hither Cooper meekly does the bidding of a heroine governed by either paranoia or acumen, and after all, the Allies haven't descended to the same "better-dead-than-alive" approach carried by the evil antagonists when an ominous crunch transpires, indeed, it is an anonymous commodity fabricated out of Hollywood's booster-ism of patriotic selflessness, added with a soupçon of zest in a maestro's hands.

first of all, the screenplay is so stupid and so shallow. a professor without any field training could become involved and acted like double o seven, flew first into swiss, then infiltrated into Italy, it's just such a naive screenplay. the sound track of the music synchronized with every gesture and movement of the actors, so over-the-top dramatic and exaggerated like Walt Disney's cartoons, sometimes very patriotic, sometimes sentimental, Christ on a crutch, givemeabreak. then when the guy sneaked into Italy, all the morons started smoking in the rear of the truck, when met Italian army's road block, the car was stopped, then easily let go, but then another stupid scenario put into play, the truck stuttered and couldn't drive away, then the Italian soldier lifted the canvas, used flashlight to check the back. the soldier must got a flu so serious that he couldn't even smell the cigarettes smoke those morons (including the high i.q. American physicist) just lit up and snuffed out a moment ago. then the stupid music accompanied the movie's actions and tempos going on and on. i don't want to mentioned the stupid arrangement of a beautiful Italian woman, Gina, the change her wet clothes in front of those men. the woman did another clothes changing in front of the American professor again, and warned him not to stare at her. the whole screenplay was just so stupidly drafted with contrived dialog, and the directing was also primitive. but the most annoying thing is the music. Jesus, sometimes even with so romantic violin score. stupid romance during the war, what a drag.

This WW2 espionage yarn gets off to a slow start but picks up steam after the action shifts to Italy and Palmer enters the picture as Cooper's love interest. Cooper acts with his usual awkwardness but in this case his uneasiness is well suited to the role of a scientist out of his element. As an Italian resistance fighter, Palmer gives a wonderfully natural performance. Although the opening credits oddly indicate that this is her film debut, she had been acting for a decade. The best parts of the film are her scenes with Cooper. The fight scene between Cooper and Lawrence is reminiscent of Hitchcock. Lang made this at the time when he was at the peak of his creative powers.

A college physics professor is convinced to go on a one-time espionage assignment in order to prevent a nuclear scientist from falling into Nazi hands. How refreshing this was realistic in 1947. These days the professor more likely would stay home and teach anti-Americanism or American Flag Burning #101 to his class at Columbia University or NYU. Anyway, this was a Mid Western professor and it was 60 years ago. The story is solid, the filming was most likely Hollywood, not Europe, but it all looks authentic.To me the most stand-out thing in the movie was the love story between the professor and underground spy Lili Palmer. I've never seen Gary Cooper so completely excited by a woman in any other movie. Likewise, Lili Palmer is galvanized by Cooper. Don't get me wrong, this was not silly overdone romance or slam-around sex, but a controlled smolder. Consider some other classic, "Casablanca" for example. Did anybody really believe Bogart and Bergman were hot for each other. I think not. In "Cloak and Dagger" we get the real thing. I didn't expect that.