1946: Cloak and Dagger (83rd)

What else happened this year? WWII stuff, it seems.

What is the plot - in one sentence? Early-ish on in WWII, A scientist (Gary Cooper) is drafted into the OSS to rescue a couple of famous scientist from Nazi hands.

I don't have time, just spoil it for me? One of the scientists is shot by a Nazi nurse, the other in convinced to be rescued only if they can save his daughter from Nazi captivity. They bring what they think is his daughter along, but it’s a trap and there’s a shoot-out. At the movie’s end, Gary cooper and the old scientist fly away on an RAF plane, leaving the woman that has fallen in love with him to the inevitable uncertain future, despite promises to meet again when the war's over.

What is the meaning of the title? An OSS guy at the beginning says that his organisation specialises in ‘cloak and dagger’ stuff.

Incidentally, Gary Cooper is working ‘on the Manhattan Project’ which appears to be him on his own doing some welding. He later speaks some German as phonetically as possible and is able to blackmail an American traitor in her hotel room, but the spy work is pretty limited.

Here's the main couple of the movie, her, as pretty as a fox, him, as hairy-handed as a gorilla.

Anything that's not aged well? Does a woman get slapped around? Amazingly, not really. There’s a (very) long battle at the end with a nazi goon* and he’s strangled slowly. During the fight he hits the female resistance fighter, but I think we can mark that as an incidental injury for this one. Even more of note, Gary Cooper deals with a hysterical woman by hugging her. She slaps him, and also calls him a ‘long American’ which seems to be pretty fitting for Gary Cooper.

There’s a funny bit at the beginning where Gary Cooper decries the waste of scientific effort of the Manhattan Project, and he argues that so many scientists, working together, instead of bringing destruction, could cure cancer. Then he lights a cigarette.

Any thoughts? The rest of the ‘spy work’ is laughably naive. For example, the female scientist they are trying to rescue has slipped into Switzerland, but mentions that she’s being blackmailed into returning to work on the Nazi nuclear weapons program. Gary Cooper tells her to ‘go there, but just do shitty work’ (I’m paraphrasing, of course) and she acts like that’s a genius idea that would never have occurred to her.

The Nazi spies are incredibly obvious, and must have been at the time the movie was made. Furthermore, the only hint at micro-technology involves a matchbox which may or may not have been a recording device, but after it is stolen by Gary Cooper, it's never mentioned again. Hilariously, Gary Cooper is able to blackmail a spy through a letter writing forgery, and a plan to hideout in an apartment is ruined by a cat.

The middle act of the movie is a waiting game – we’re waiting on the scientist to be freed, and his daughter to be rescued. In the meantime Gary Cooper and an attractive resistance fighter need to remain in hiding. After a few failed attempts, they end up hiding in a bomb shelter, and it’s heavily implied that they have sex there. This romance is a bit of a diversion but it’s not without its charms, it shows the hardships happening for people in Europe, the sacrifices that resistance workers have to make, and hints at the upcoming PTSD of an entire generation. It’s not particularly saccharine, and the ending, where he has to bid her adieu, is affecting. What hasn’t aged well is the use of ‘jealousy’ to make him interested, but that’s by the by, we also get a strangely paced romantic montage.

Would you recommend this? Yeah this was good. I’ll recommend it.

Final thoughts?

The pockmarked Nazi who is strangled in a doorway by Gary Cooper is one of the guys who is in the gang at the end of ‘The invisible Stripes’ – I noticed that because he has a very distinctive face and I wondered, almost aloud, if I’d ever seen him before when I watched that movie. Lo and behold, he’s in another movie almost right away. I’m sure a quick IMDb search would say I had seen him before, but who wants to go to that site?

At a couple of times, in both America and in Europe, Gary Cooper chomped down on an apple. I was sure this was going to inspire some ‘eureka’ moment or lead to a call-back, but it just turns out that he likes apples. Weird.

Anyway, I've finished watching movies now, so I'm coralling the notes that I've made into readable articles. I hope you can imagiene that it's not easy. You can read the rest right here, thanks!