It's 3 September 1939 in the Mediterranean port of Esperanto. Anxious civilians besiege the British consulate trying to get on a boat, but the consul (Leslie Banks) is busy playing a game of chess against his German counterpart (Sigurd Lohde) at the club. When war is declared, his assistant Jim (Hugh McDermott, for once not playing an American) brings him the news and the game is put to one side. Esperanto declares its neutrality, and the Hotel Adolf hedges its bets - displaying a portrait of the Fuhrer beneath a Union flag.
It's a nice opening scene, and Esperanto, where the police strut about in comic opera uniforms, is a little bit Wes Anderson. For a film released in 1940, the propaganda message is light touch and the Germans are not demonised. A developing storyline surrounds the Scharndorf, a German merchant ship that the British believe (correctly) is actually a covert supply ship for German U Boats. The consul is told to put someone with a radio transmitter on the ship to send its position to the Royal Navy so it can be sunk, and appoints Jim for the highly dangerous job, much to the horror of his daughter Helen (Phyllis Calvert), who is in love with Jim.
Unfortunately, the film does goes downhill from its opening scenes. Yvonne Arnaud's turn as bar owner Rosa Pirenti is a histrionic performance that simply overbears everything else. It's maybe not her fault (Arnaud is fine as Madame Lebouche in Tomorrow We Live). The director, Marcel Varnel, should just have told her to turn herself down from 11.
Things are not much improved by Will Fyffe as Ferguson, the skipper of a ship called the Annie Louise which is sunk offshore almost as soon as war breaks out and who Rosa is determined to marry. His turn as an amusingly cantankerous old sea salt falls just as flat as Arnaud's.
