Duello mortale

Fritz Lang loved to leave one's heart in one's throat with his story about how, in the 1930s, Adolf Hitler ordered him for a meeting. The Fuhrer had seen Metropolis and wanted Lang to be an official Reich filmmaker. Lang said, "Oh well yeah sure of course," and then fled the country as fast as he could, not even stopping to withdraw his bank account. In Hollywood soon after, Lang had a little window to clear the air with this dramatic thriller.

I know it seems like the plot is best withheld once you read as far as that a British hunter happens to all the sudden have Hitler in his crosshairs. I won't tell you anything more about that situation. But I will say the film is episodic. There is a chapter involving Roddy McDowell aiding and abetting, and another concerning a cockney streetwalker played by Lang regular Joan Bennett who very quickly falls in love with him, although the context and situation allow a more sensible reason for there to be an easy token love subplot than usual. The hero is played by Walter Pidgeon, a refreshing actor of the studio era owing to his guilelessness, his lack of any affectation, though it grows bothersome that he appears as a well-to-do Englishman with an inexplicable American accent.

The film's lasting issues crop up simply because of the fact that it was 1941. There are several moments where you will be absorbed in Fritz Lang's trademark approach wherein points on social evils and multi-faceted subtext sneak up on you, but other moments don the guise of a zealous, conventional pro-war film, but luckily, that assault on the Lang's ominous omniscience mostly ushers in during the final few minutes. For the most part, this underdog war picture, which the Hays Office claimed in the time and place's atmosphere which avoided entangled alliances and controlled any cultural exchange, showed all Germans as evil as opposed to other films showing both good non-Nazi Germans as well as evil National Socialists, is a very carefully laid, continuously ambushing and expertly played bit of watchful waiting.