Too much of everything

Pretty Good

Did you people see the same film I saw?

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Producer: Hal B. Wallis. Executive producer: Jack L. Warner. Copyright 30 September 1939 by Warner Bros Pictures, Inc. A First National picture. New York opening at the Strand: 22 September 1939. U.S. release: 30 September 1939. Australian release: October-December 1939. 83 minutes. NOTES: Thanks to her co-starring roles with super-star Errol Flynn in The Sea Hawk and Footsteps in the Dark, Brenda Marshall was extremely popular with Australian audiences. This seems to be her film debut. COMMENT: Politically dated but it still has some interest. There's a bit of excitement, though the climactic action finishes just as it is warming up. What makes the film interesting is that it is given the full Warner Bros "A" treatment: brisk, slick direction by Lloyd Bacon, attention-getting montage routines, lavish sets and a spectacular support cast. Brenda Marshall, although not as stunningly beautiful as the scriptwriters specify, makes a good fist of the title role.One thing we like about the script is that it doesn't follow conventional melodramatic plot lines but has some unexpected, if politically motivated, twists. Joel McCrea fills the hero part with his usual likableness, while Jeffrey Lynn holds up a small and unimportant part as the hero's buddy. It's wonderful to see Martin Kosleck looking so neat and villainously smooth. Our old friends Robert O. Davis and Hans Schumm are also along to fill out the Nazi ranks. Sarah Edwards and Vera Lewis are disgruntled enquirers at the consulate and there is a large round of familiar cameo players on the State Department staff.Bacon's direction is brisk and assured, if inclined to use too many close-ups. Rosher's lighting photography treats his players kindly, even if it is a minor factor in the creation of atmosphere. But the sets are impressive and the music score has that familiar Warners' sound.

In the 30s and 40s, when Warner Brothers got hold of a social or political philosophy they didn't monkey around. In "Espionage Agent," released in 1939 when America was neutral and would remain so for another couple of years, Warners gives us a heads up on who the bad guys are.Brenda Marshall, desperate and broke, in the middle of the Spanish Civil War, stumbles into the German Consulate and begs them for shelter. They give it to her -- forged passport and all -- with the proviso that she go to America and spy for them.On the ship, she meets all-American Joel McRea, they fall in love and get married. She forgets about her agreement with the Germans until one of them shows up and reminds her of it -- and don't forget those forged papers. She tells all to her husband. The couple travel to Switzerland to unravel this tangled web of bent allegiances and threats.The Nazis are never named, although the uniforms are suggestive. I'm not sure Germany is even mentioned. It's mainly "them" and "they" and "their kind." The Nazis come in three types. The thugs, the most numerous, are brutal and slimy. They do the wet work. Their skulls are misshapen or their jaws too large for their faces. The middle men are like Martin Kosleck, icy, smiling, holding his cigarette in a fancy European way, and so forth. Kosleck himself, born into a Jewish family, was a refugee from Hitler who looked so much like Goebbels that he managed to play him on screen five times. There is always a Nazi boss who runs the spies. As usual, he's tall, distinguished looking, gray haired, suave, and has a thin black mustache. He speaks with a British accent and carries a Luger.Joel McRea could never play a Nazi. Not only didn't he look or sound enough like a Nazi -- that wouldn't necessarily have been a hindrance -- but he didn't have the acting range to pull it off. No, he could never play a Nazi. He would have had to stretch to play a man with devalued impulses, no matter how well he stifled them.Brenda Marshall is the dame caught in a moral vice. She cares nothing for the Nazis but in revealing her circumstances she may lose the man she loves or, at the least, cause him to end his career with the Foreign Service. Like McRea's, her acting is reliable and straight out of the Hollywood lost wax process. She has a piercing stare, no matter what the rest of her features are doing. I'm not sure the camera ever catches her blinking. At the same time, she looks more attractive here than in any of the other films I've seen her in, like "The Sea Hawk" and "Captains of the Clouds." She looks spotless, dry cleaned and pressed, even sexy. She was married for years to William Holden, whom she evidently nagged constantly.You know, though, taken all in all, the movie isn't as exciting as it ought to be. The tempo is fast. The scenes don't drag. Warner Brothers' scenes never drag. But the plot is surprisingly dull and director Lloyd Bacon adds little vitality to the proceedings. There is no subtlety in it. The actors hit their marks and say their lines. The camera is placed where it is most effective. A more talented and innovative director, Hitchcock, for instance, could have turned this into much more than it is.

Want to know how much difference a director can make? Watch this film, with Joel McCrea as a blundering American naïf in Europe on the eve of World War II exposing an Axis spy plot under the hacky direction of Lloyd Bacon, and then watch "Foreign Correspondent," which McCrea made the next year in a similar role, similar plot, at least one supporting cast member (Martin Kosleck) in common and even another sequence set during a rainstorm -- but under the direction of Alfred Hitchcock. "Espionage Agent" isn't a bad movie and it probably would be a lot more likable if McCrea hadn't made "Foreign Correspondent" (albeit playing a terminally naïve journalist instead of a terminally naïve diplomat) a year later.Incidentally, the comment by "bkoganbing" is wrong. Though the film begins in 1915, it quickly leaps forward to 1936 (the year the Spanish Civil War broke out) and the bulk of it takes place in the late 1930's -- though, even so, the German uniforms are otherwise correct but their armbands are missing the swastika. Even after making "Confessions of a Nazi Spy" (which was about Nazi abuses in the U.S., not in their homeland), Warners was still being skittish about directly taking on the German government.

Joel McCrea is a member of the foreign service who inadvertently marries a part-time spy in "Espionage Agent." This is a very interesting film for several reasons. War is about to break out in Europe, and the U.S. is planning to stay neutral, and in fact, in one scene, an American broadcaster gives a call for neutrality.After getting into the U.S. on a forged passport, McCrea's wife, played by the darkly beautiful Brenda Marshall, confesses her past associations, and states that she's been approached to do more favors for an espionage group. McCrea resigns his post, and with his wife's help, sets out to expose the spy network in the U.S.In the aftermath of 9/11, watching a 67-year-old film where a group of people have agents in place throughout the country and sites ready to bomb is chilling.There are some tense, exciting scenes and an attractive cast, but the film is more of historical interest than anything else. Look for TV Superman George Reeves in a very small, uncredited role.