Night Train to Munich
Directed by Carol Reed
Studio: Criterion
Year: 1940
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Running Time: 95 minutes
Rating: NR
Audio: Dolby Digital 1.0 English
Subtitles: SDH
MSRP: $ 29.95
Release Date: June 22, 2010
Review Date: June 17, 2010
The Film
4/5
It’s difficult to keep thoughts of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes out of one’s head when he’s watching Carol Reed’s Night Train to Munich. After all, they both share the same leading lady, the same pair of supporting actors playing for laughs, the same writers, and a portion of the scenario taking place on a train loaded with evildoers out to get our heroes. In every way, Hitchcock’s film is the superior item, but that doesn’t mean that Night Train to Munich isn’t a cracking good suspense thriller in its own right. It’s always terribly hard to match a masterpiece. Sometimes, being very good is fine indeed.
After scientist Axel Bomasch (James Harcourt) flees to England from the Nazis when they covet his revolutionary formula for armor plating, the Germans arrange an elaborate plan to recapture him using his daughter Anna (Margaret Lockwood) as bait, and it succeeds due to the machinations of the seductively slimy Karl Marsen (Paul Henreid). To get them back in the hands of the Allies, England sends undercover spy Gus Bennett (Rex Harrison) masquerading as a German major who must use every trick in the book to keep his quarry safe as well as protecting his own identity from two former British school chums (Basil Radford, Naunton Wayne) who happen to be in Germany and recognize him.
Though Carol Reed would go on to direct some of the cinema’s most masterful thrillers (Odd Man Out, The Third Man), in 1940 when this was released, he was still perfecting his craft and so his allowing sequences to drag a bit and not ratcheting up the tension levels to the max are slips that a young director can easily be excused for committing. Mixing sly comedy and suspense is one of the hardest assignments a director can tackle, and the fact that there are some superb moments (the climactic shootout, the cable car escape) easily compensate for some draggy moments on the train and earlier in a hotel room. With the war in Europe already underway when the film was released, the Nazis make a convenient and most effective set of villains which our protagonists must outwit. Too bad some of the outwitting happens off screen (writers Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder opted for a surprise revelation instead of giving the audience the immediate satisfaction of seeing the bad guys thwarted). Still, they keep the thrills coming at a steady pace, and they use the same stuffy, dense British characters of Caldicott and Charters as comedy relief and repeat their rise to heroic stature by the end of the film. Yes, it might be overly reminiscent of The Lady Vanishes, but it’s an effective, entertaining echo just the same.
Rex Harrison is a bit acerbic and cold as the heroic Bennett (and his German accent needs real work), and one never gets the immediate romantic connection with Margaret Lockwood that she shared almost instantly with Michael Redgrave in the Hitchcock picture. Lockwood is the same plucky fighter she was in the earlier film even against more formidable opponents here than before. Paul Henreid (billed here as Paul von Henreid) startles as the cunning Nazi: so ingrained is he in our memories as the freedom fighting anti-Nazi Victor Laszlo in Casablanca that the very thought of his aligning himself with the Third Reich seems almost unimaginable. Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne repeat their cricket-loving British bachelors in a carbon copy of their work in The Lady Vanishes and other films, their vacant fumbles and unexpected heroism surely a tonic for a nation then-newly at war.
Video Quality
3.5/5
The film’s 1.33:1 theatrical aspect ratio is replicated here, and Criterion has slightly windowboxed the image in their usual style with Academy ratio pictures on DVD. The stock footage used through the film was in poor shape, and those scenes look frail indeed. There are a few random white scratches in other portions of the transfer as well. Grayscale looks on the whole pleasing with above average detail in close shots, but black levels are not as deep as they might have been. The film has been divided into 23 chapters.
Audio Quality
3/5
The Dolby Digital 1.0 audio track is very typical for sound recording of the period. There’s a low level of hiss still present on the soundtrack despite Criterion’s best efforts to eliminate it, and there are also some very faint but noticeable sounds of muffled crackle which are likely the remnants of the sound remastering for this movie. Dialogue is mostly easy to hear though there is some slight distortion in the upper reaches of voices in the early going.
Special Features
2/5
The only bonus on the disc is a film analysis by scholars Peter Evans and Bruce Babingtonwho talk about the director’s career, the writers on the project and their earlier work on The Lady Vanishes, the stars of the film, and the movie’s themes and focuses, all using a healthy dose of clips from the movie to illustrate their points. In anamorphic widescreen, their discussion lasts 29 ¼ minutes.
The enclosed 14-page bookletcontains the cast and crew list for the movie, some stills from the film, and an appreciation of the movie by film critic Philip Kemp.
In Conclusion
3.5/5 (not an average)
Night Train to Munich was an excellent learning project for director Carol Reed who obviously used his experiences with this thriller to later turn out a handful of real masterpieces in the genre. It may not be a great film, but it’s a very enjoyable one and one that comes with a firm recommendation for lovers of classic suspense.
Matt Hough
Charlotte, NC
