Journey Into Fear (1943)

(On Cable TV, March 2020) There’s something slightly insane about those WW2 thrillers shot and released as the war was going on—trying to comment on topical events despite the long length of film production (which was admittedly shorter then than now) and the possibility that real-world events would overtake them. And that’s not even mentioning the biggest uncertainty of all: not knowing how the war would end. Usually, screenwriters went around this problem by focusing on personal adventures, slightly blurring the background, cranking up the propaganda and hoping for the best. Journey into Fear is one of those instant-WW2 thrillers, but making life even harder on itself by adapting a 1940 novel. (Famously, the film’s protagonist has to escape to another country than in the book because France had been overrun by the Nazis in-between.) The result is a claustrophobic thriller about escaping the Nazis in one of the less overexposed fronts of WW2: Turkey. Journey into Fear is short (68 minutes!) and to the point, with a rather good action climax after a film that largely takes place aboard a passenger ship filled with tension. Orson Welles shows up on-screen and seems to have fun as a Turkish general, but the film’s messy production history holds that Welles was also involved as screenwriter, director and producer—effectively making this an unofficial early-Welles picture. Joseph Cotten and the beautiful Dolores Del Río also co-star to good effect. While not a great movie, Journey into Fear remains an effective thriller, and to think it was produced as the war went or, with no less a mercurial presence as Welles, is almost mind-boggling.