Passport to Destiny
Passport to Destiny
NR | 31 January 1944 (USA)
Passport to Destiny Trailers

A British war widow travels to Berlin to assassinate Hitler.

Reviews
Harockerce

What a beautiful movie!

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GazerRise

Fantastic!

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Holstra

Boring, long, and too preachy.

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Hadrina

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

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LeonLouisRicci

Offbeat and Wild RKO Comedy Starring Elsa Lanchester. Showcasing Her considerable Comedic Talents, makes this Farce a Lot of Fun. Watching the Scrubwoman Foil the Nazis one can't help Think of "The Great Dictator" (1940), "To Be or Not to Be" (1942), and Even the Three Stooges.This little B-Movie Charms its Way through the One Hour Running Time and is Never Boring. Elsa Carries the Show and the Supporting Cast Helps make this a Goofy Gamble that Works its Wonders with its Fantasy Plot, the Assassination of Adolf Hitler, by a Commoner (a Female no less). "Who's a commoner?", says Mrs. Muggins.The Silliness about Her Dead Husband is Overplayed a bit, and the Deal about the "Magic" Eye had to be Debunked because of the Hays Code's "Religion" Clause, but Aside from that, the Movie is quite Entertaining.

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Leonard Thomason

The majority of reviews written about Passport to Destiny {formerly Dangerous Journey}(1944) are merciless, criticizing the very entertaining tongue-in-cheek qualities it has in common with the great motion pictures All Through the Night (1941), Desperate Journey (1942) and To Be Or Not To Be (1942).Both Humphrey Bogart and Ronald Reagan used double talk gibberish as a means of escape from Nazis, while Jack Benny masqueraded as Nazi Colonel 'Concentration Camp Ehrhardt' during the fall of Poland. Why is it so much to ask us to believe the exploits of a cockney charlady scrubbing her way across war torn Europe to the Reich Chancellery! If you want to criticize the credibility about war dramas, just take a good look at Man Hunt (1941), Escape (1940) and Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942), where you'll get to see Walter Pidgeon a big game hunter armed with a rifle within shooting distance of Adolph Hitler's residence in the German Alps, while you'll find Robert Taylor, Ginger Rogers and Cary Grant waltzing in and out of concentration camps like they were simply the county lockup.Only a few films routinely circulate featuring the multi-talented Elsa Lanchester: Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Lassie Come Home (1943), Bishop's Wife (1947), Big Clock (1948), Witness for the Prosecution (1957) and Mary Poppins (1964). Passport to Destiny needs to be released on DVD!

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ejrjr

Allegedly this is a comedy but you will be hard pressed to find a reason to laugh. At other times it drifts into spy drama but the situations are so contrived that you will be hard pressed to believe.The widow of a British Army Sergeant Major is working during the early years of World War II in London as a cleaning lady. She thinks a glass eye is her husband's mystical lucky charm and will protect her from any harm or danger. Therefore she decides to pursue Adolph Hitler and save the world.She manages to travel from London to Berlin, working as a cleaning woman, in just three weeks and then obtain a job as a cleaning woman at Hitler's headquarters. Eventually she manages to infiltrate his empty office and while rehearsing the assassination, she is captured by one of Hitler's top aides.But, somehow we are transported through time and suddenly the Reich Chancery is bombed by the RAF allowing our heroine and two other spies to escape to London by stealing a Luftwaffe airplane which for some unknown reason is a DC-3.While be feted by the London press, she discovers the magical glass eye was just one of many in a box with her former husband's military uniform.Why did the Allies waste their time battling the German Army?

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kerrison-philips

This is surely one of the most extraordinary films to have come out of America during the war. It is also notable for being the only Hollywood movie in which Elsa Lanchester, best known as The Bride of Frankenstein, had the lead part and top billing. She plays a cockney charlady who is convinced she's protected by a "lucky charm" once owned by her late husband (cut to a photo of Charles Laughton) and is resolved to assassinate Hitler. During the London blitz, armed only with her bucket and a mop, she stows away on a ship across the English Channel and proceeds to scrub her way across Occupied Europe by pretending to be deaf and dumb. She lands up in Hitler's HQ in Berlin where language problems are solved by all the 'bad' Germans speaking English with funny guttural accents! Elsa gets a job as a cleaner in Hitler's office but he's out at the time so she delivers a propaganda-like speech to his empty chair. Some 'good' Germans opposed to Hitler (they all speak English with American accents) whisk Elsa back to England in a stolen plane. She is hailed as a heroine only to discover that the "lucky charm" she took with her was part of a job-lot of glass eyes! An absolutely priceless movie, and one which at the end is dedicated to the fighting US forces overseas. One can only wonder what they made of it.

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