Simply A Masterpiece

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

The acting in this movie is really good.

Blistering performances.

Directorial Debut for Jules Dassin and it Shows a Talent in the Rough as the Film has Flourishes that Enhance its Low Budget. It has Style. Conrad Veidt is Excellent in what Starts Out as a Dual Role.The Film was Made Early in the Turmoil of the Beginning of WWII and as such was Able to Show a Sympathetic German. The Implausibility of the Story is a Suspension of Disbelief but Nevertheless it is Intriguing and Suspenseful with Good Performances All Around.An MGM B-Movie with Class. Dassin would Dismiss All of His MGM Output in Later Years. Worth a Watch because of the Director and Veidt and for an Early Hollywood Effort to Rally the Citizenry.

Summary: Patriotic But not Soapy *** This review may contain spoilers ***This is the story of twins who may have looked identical and grown up in the same household in pre-WWII Germany, but who are worlds apart, well, in just about everything. One immigrated to America while the other remained in Germany to serve the Nazis. While Otto was kind and caring, loving his adopted country, Hugo was more than eager to carry out Nazi plans to sabotage American interests. It must have been amazingly difficult to produce a movie which shows true patriotism without making the moviegoer roll his eyes. Somehow, most of us seem to have been programmed against such films. But this film was patriotic without being soapy. SPOILER ALERT: The last scene tore at my heart. Okay, the music in the scene was a little too much, but if you'll mute your TV and watch the look on Veidt's face when on the way to his death he sees the Statue of Liberty, well, it made me remember that America really is worth fighting for. I needed to see that movie. Perhaps you need to as well. And how ironic. Conrad Veidt had few opportunities to play anything other than an evil Nazi (this film being one of them). And yet all the while, most of his paychecks were spent to support the allies against the forces of his own native land, Germany! As I read a little about Veidt after watching the movie, I wondered if perhaps this film was the only real opportunity the man ever had as an actor to display his incredibly strong love of freedom.

Nazi Agent presents a rare opportunity to see the great Conrad Veidt play a lead role (as twin brothers with opposite personalities and values, no less) in a well-preserved sound film with a solid, serious theme and lasting value. Although this is obviously a "B"-level production made on a low budget, the brisk direction by Jules Dassin, the tight and literate script and some very good supporting players, make it as satisfying as many an "A" effort. Otto is a gentle expatriate German bookseller whose quiet life in America is disrupted when his Nazi twin, Baron Hugo von Detner, threatens to reveal his illegal immigrant status to the US authorities unless he allows the Nazi spy network to use his bookstore as a message center. Otto desolately goes along for a while but when he finally resists, Hugo comes to shoot him. They struggle. Otto shoots Hugo instead, then assumes his identity and proceeds to sabotage the saboteurs, who include the memorable Martin Kosleck, whose presence in many films from this time screamed "Nazi." With his marionette-like features, lacquered hair and fey efficiency, he was a top scene stealer. Another excellent performance comes from the prolific Frank Reicher as Fritz, Hugo's aging valet who quickly realizes that his master isn't really his master. But it's really Veidt's movie, playing warm and cold, frightened and bold, kind and cruel – all with shading, subtlety and expertise. The movies suffered an irreparable loss in April 1943 when this man died on a California golf course at the age of 50.This quietly powerful film is an adventure of ideas and ideals. The ending, though not as well shot as it might have been, is both stirring and heartbreaking.

In 1926 Veidt made another film in which he played a good brother and a bad brother--The Brothers Schellenberg. They both came from an educated but penniless class; the good brother founded a commune and the bad one was a ruthless, social-climbing capitalist. The good brother, as I recall, had a beard and wore rumpled clothes, while the bad one was clean-shaven and and had an elegant wardrobe of evening clothes.... In Nazi Agent, the two brothers have similar physical distinctiveness but now they of the landowning class: the gentle academic driven from Germany by the Nazi aversion to historical truth, and the potently Nazi German Consul in "State City." The twist is that the good brother must disguise himself as the bad brother in order to make his contribution to the anti-Nazi effort by breaking up a nest of spies. It seems to me that the twin-substitution plot usually involves women, not men--with the notable exception of Dead Ringers...? Veidt gets to do what Jeremy Irons did, play twin A pretending to be twin B in such a way that the audience, but not twin B's associates, sees the difference. Even old Fritz, who has known the twins from childhood, recognizes Otto by a scar, not by his manners.The film seems to have been made before Pearl Harbor and released afterwards; in the world it depicts, Canada has joined the war but the U.S. is still on somewhat friendly terms with Germany.Another viewer commented that Veidt is not sexually attractive. Hmm. I think that the character he plays in this film is not supposed to be very sexually aggressive--the big romantic scene does not even involve a kiss, and the bookseller twin has been up to this time someone who is more interested in rare stamps than in women. But one might check out his two films for Michael Powell, or Escape, or A Woman's Face, in all of which his character is supposed to be, and is, extremely sexually attractive. It is interesting that in both Escape and A Woman's Face he at first appears as sexy and charming, in different ways, a real Prince Charming for the very different heroines of the two films. Then, towards the end of the films, he reveals himself for the ruthless Nazi he is, showing extreme cruelty of various kinds.So although Veidt could turn on and off the sexiness and otherwise vary his characters, he made three films in this period in which he is the good German (OK, Scandinavian in A Woman's Face) and the bad Nazi: Escape, A Woman's Face, and Nazi Agent. By this time, I believe, he was a British citizen, contributing generously to the war effort, but it's interesting that he was not playing The Hun who tosses babies out the window, as Von Stroheim did during WWI, but two men, one who loves music and women and knowledge, the other who sees Nazism as the only path to success and riches, and who has been utterly corrupted by it.