The Traitor

This is a sinister post-war drama with a terrible ring of sadness and tragedy about it, as the murderer is himself unaware of the fact that there is no ground for his motive. It's a tragedy of treason, and no one understands anything about it until it's too late.

This is therefore very much a film of mysterious undercurrents, understatements and hidden meanings, a film "written between the lines". It's easy to dismiss it for its failure to convey it's true meaning, but you do it wrong if you don't give it a lot of afterthought.

The surviving members of an underground resistance group against the Nazis meet annually in an old mansion outside London to commemorate their leader who was shot on that day by the Nazis. It appears that someone in the group had betrayed him. The new leader colonel Price, played by Donald Wolfit in a typical role of his, announces his decision to find out who the traitor was among them at their new meeting, and no one is allowed to leave the place until the issue is settled. An agent is on his way from Berlin to reveal the name. He never reaches them alive, and two American intelligence officers come importuning at their meeting to make matters worse and more complicated.

Donald Wolfit is a sure name to make any film he participates in a most memorable event. Christopher Lee as the doctor attracts all suspicion from the audience by his covert attitude as of a man who knew too much. Anton Diffring as the pianist contributes with the mood by his music, which he wants to call "Prelude to Death" which is altered to "Prelude without a name" by those who want to live. It's very reminiscent and almost a paraphrase of the Warsaw Concerto, it certainly brings the same atmosphere but is less efficient as music, while the drama story here is much more interesting and goes deeper. It's the difference between before the war and after.

At the same time it's a very intriguing murder thriller on the level with Agatha Christie, but here everything is logic and natural, it's a matter of inevitable tragedy of fate and not at all an artificial intrigue, like commonly with Agatha Christie.

I was really disappointed with that spy thriller : it's slow, no movement, just people listening to each other with no intensity, no particular camera angles, the camera is just placed in front of the actors. The whole movie is boring and the final twist is ridiculously directed, I was puzzled to see that lack of intelligence. The actors all seem sleepy, even Christopher Lee. And the director Michael McCarthy directed only 8 movies rather unknown.

On the same subject, just to see an inspired direction, I advise "Marie-Octobre" directed in 1959 by Julien Duvivier, same meeting in a house with only one woman (and what a woman, Danièle Darrieux) with top notch masculine casting like Lino Ventura, Bernard Blier, Robert Dalban, Paul Meurisse, Serge Reggiani, Noël Roquevert, Paul Frankeur, Daniel Ivernel, ... There is real camera and setting work, and the actors are really playing tough.

THE TRAITOR is nothing more than one of those 'old dark house' type mystery films dressed up as something else. There's a definite Agatha Christie vibe going on here (think TEN LITTLE INDIANS) as a group of characters meet up in a sprawling mansion to discover which of their number is a secret Nazi traitor intent on claiming the lives of the rest of the group.

The story has a WW2 background with the assembled men being Germans who are former members of a resistance group fighting against the Nazis. One of their number hangs himself and the men believe a traitor forced him to do the deed; the rest of the running time follows a classic whodunit mould with Robert Bray the investigating hero.

THE TRAITOR suffers from a slow and stodgy first half where it takes an age for the men to even be informed that there's a traitor in their midst. Still, it does pick up towards the end and particularly at the climax, and there's a solid cast to keep you watching. Donald Wolfit (BLOOD OF THE VAMPIRE) is the one-armed lead, and he's supported by the familiar faces of Christopher Lee and Anton Diffring. Not a classic, more of a curiosity piece for fans of this era.

1957's "The Traitor" centers on a small band of resistance fighters whose leader was murdered by the Nazis after being betrayed by one of their members. Every year since the war's end, they all gather together in the English country home of Colonel Charles Price (Donald Wolfit), except that this time, the Colonel expects a visit from one Theodore Dehmel (Colin Croft), who will be flying in from Berlin, having discovered the traitor's identity. As had been the case during wartime, Price intends to dispense justice himself without any police involvement, but Dehmer arrives and promptly expires with a knife in his back, uttering the mysterious words, 'There's been a mistake.' Once the characters are introduced in the opening reel, the scene never leaves the Colonel's home, making for a claustrophobic screenplay that benefits hugely from its exceptional cast. As another commentator noted, the solution is ingenious, but without any concrete evidence that points to the guilty party. Most of the group are established as being German, except for the Swiss Alfred Baum (Frederick Schiller) and the Polish Joseph Brezina (Anton Diffring), the latter a brilliant concert pianist, allowing Diffring to display a more sympathetic side to his normally villainous countenance. The most notable supporting player is Christopher Lee, still a few months before his star making turn in Hammer's "The Curse of Frankenstein," and sporting a flawless German accent as Doctor Neumann, whose presence no doubt inspired the American distributor to change the generic British title from "The Traitor" to "The Accursed," giving it more of a horror slant. Seldom seen since the old days of black and white television, its obscurity seems destined to continue.

You would think with a plot like you'd have in "The Accursed" that the film would be exciting. However, I found it to be a boring, talky mess.

When the film begins, there's a reunion of WWII resistance fighters. However, it seems that several folks aren't there this year and it appears as if someone is killing them! Perhaps one of them is really an old Nazi taking out their vengeance on the group. A nice setup, huh? Well, this all comes out in the first few minutes of the film...what follows are a bunch of folks in an old house...and a US military man who shows up and talks and talks and talks trying to piece together what's happening.

Had the film been able to unfold OUTSIDE the room and there had been far less talking, it would have been a good film. But you don't SEE any of the action and the result is just claustrophobic and boring....very, very boring despite fine actors like Christopher Lee and Anton Diffring being in the movie.