Journey Into Fear (1943)

Director:

Norman Foster

Writers:

Eric Ambler (novel)
Joseph Cotten (screenplay)

Release Date:

12 February 1943 (USA)

Genre:

Film-Noir | Drama | War

Tagline:

Welles and Del Rio together! as Terror Man vs. Leopard Woman--for possession of a mysterious stranger in the powder-keg Middle East...a man with a military secret worth more than his love and his life!...It's menace melodrama thrilled with mighty mystery and suspense...SEE IT!

Plot:

A US Navy engineer, returning to the US with his wife from a conference, finds himself pursued by Nazi agents...

Plot Keywords:

Ship | Nazi | Hotel | Engineer | Rainstorm

Cast

Joseph Cotten	...	Howard Graham
Dolores del Rio	...	Josette Martel
Ruth Warrick	...	Mrs. Stephanie Graham
Agnes Moorehead	...	Mrs. Mathews
Jack Durant	...	Gogo Martel
Everett Sloane	...	Kopeikin
Eustace Wyatt	...	Prof Haller
Frank Readick	...	Matthews
Edgar Barrier	...	Kuvetli
Jack Moss	...	Peter Banat
Stefan Schnabel	...	Translator for ships captain
Hans Conried	...	Swami magician
Robert Meltzer	...	Ship baggageman
Richard Bennett	...	Ship's Captain
Orson Welles	...	Colonel Haki

Runtime:

68 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Turkish | French | German

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

Sweden:15 | USA:Approved (PCA #8048) | Australia:G | Finland:K-16

Company:

Mercury Productions

Trivia:

In late August 1942, RKO decided to delay the release of the movie because critics panned it in press previews. By that time, Orson Welles' contract was terminated by a new studio head. As part of the settlement, Welles agreed to recut the last reel and film additional scenes. He added the voice-over by Joseph Cotten at the beginning and end of the movie, and designed the pre-credit sequence.

Goofs:

Continuity: Near the end of the movie, Joseph Cotten is seen walking in the rain and entering a hotel. When he walks up to the front desk his suit looks hardly touched by the rain, however, in the next scene when he enters his wife's room his suit is drenched.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Suburban Girl (2007)

Soundtrack:

C'est mon couer

Wartime noir thriller with Cotten and Welles

Wartime noir crafted from an Eric Ambler thriller, with a screenplay by lead actor Joseph Cotton with Orson Welles, and the influence of Orson Welles is everywhere. He produced and designed the film, and speculation is that he lost control at some point in the production, that RKO brought in another director to take over the project, and that extreme cuts were made. The run time is very short, just 68 minutes. Character development (other than Cotten as protagonist) seems spotty and and events seem to accelerate in the last third of the film, an acceleration not explained by the escalating excitement of the story-line. Nonetheless, the film works as a splendid admixture of wartime intrigue and film noir, and bears the mark of Welles's vision, the strong camera angles, the shadowy sets, the large and small spaces, the cutting. Cotten is fine as Howard Graham, a naval engineer whose assistance to the Turkish navy the Nazis would like to cut short. The plot has a many intricacies and concealed identities, but the strongest character by far is the Turkish head of intelligence, Col. Haki, played by Welles as a powerful, shrewd, smart man with a trace of self-mocking humour. The propaganda function of the film—including its indirect persuasion directed to the U.S. about joining the effort to defeat the Nazis—is very well handled.