Titreenp SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

GazerRise Fantastic!

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Cassandra Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

eyesour The first answer is because it is written by an absolute master of his craft, who penned a whole clutch of wonderful screenplays, including A Place in the Sun, The Bridge on the River Kwai, and Lawrence of Arabia, just for starters. Believe it or not ! Secondly, it is exceptionally well-shot and well-directed by another master; as well as stunningly acted by its two leads, Mason and Darrieux. The rest of the cast are workmanlike, rather than outstanding, but this merely moves the story along without irrelevant distractions. It is exceptionally slickly told, and very exciting.Thirdly, the underlying theme is remarkably subtle and multi-facetted in its ambiguities. It is not surprising that the script-writer was blacklisted: his political sympathies are detectable. Like High Noon, from the same year, it is anything but simple and straightforward in its utterly fascinating and intriguing sub-text.The whole point of the liaison between Mason and his pre-war employer is that it is motivated by a class-ridden hatred and desire for revenge on Mason's part, resulting in a bitter sense of humiliation experienced by Darrieux. There is no love of any kind lost between them, in spite of their mutually fake and passionless kisses. Both characters are completely amoral, but Mason is partly redeemed by his scintillating wit and sense of humour. "Knowing the length and thickness of the rope is of little use to the man about to be hanged". Marvellous line.Sometimes the reviews of others make me weep. Mason is Albanian, not British; and Michael Rennie is British, not American. Granted, his accent is a little odd. Ten stars.

Boba_Fett1138 Here we have s spy-thriller that is not just like any other. First of all the main character is not working for the 'good guys', which already was a surprising move to take for this movie.Reason why this movie tells this particular story, is because it's all being based on a true story, that was a quite remarkable one. An Albanian born guy, who worked for the British embassy in Turkey, becoming a spy for Nazi Germany during WW II, just simply for the money. It doesn't try to romanticize anything and it doesn't ever want to make you care for its main character but it's simply telling a story, in a rather good and compelling way.It's not a slick or very exciting spy-thriller. Instead it's more of a talkative one, that is being kept deliberately straightforward and small and simple with all of its settings and characters. No doubt this was all also due to budget reasons but it's something that works out well for the movie eventually, as well as for its overall style and tense atmosphere.It's a movie that lets its actors do most of the work, to tell its story with. And the movie has plenty of fine actors in it, that carry this movie and have the right required charisma and talent for it. James Mason is really good as a smooth talking and looking spy, who is not necessarily likable but he is a very interesting character, which makes you want to keep watching.It's also a movie you need to keep on paying attention to, or else you will most likely miss an important aspect about its story. In that regard this is not a movie for just everybody but having said that, it still has plenty of entertainment and excitement to over as well. It just is not what this entire movie was all about and you shouldn't watch this movie expecting a thriller, with plenty of chases or shootouts in it.An ultimately very rewarding movie.8/10 http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

sol1218 (There are Spoilers) It's March 1944 and things aren't going that good for the Germans in Europe with them being thrown out of the USSR and desperately holding on to their former alley Italy holding off the allied forces there who are within artillery fire from Rome. With all this going on the Germans need all the help that they can get and they get it in the form of the valet to the Briitish ambassador to Turkey an ambitious civil servant in His Majesty's service Ulyesses Diello, James Mason. Diello has had it with his life that was going nowhere and wanted to make it big and then check out to South America, in Rio De Janeiro, and live like a king but the only way he can pull that off is by spying for the Germans and getting his hands on top secret information. Diello plans to get this secret information from his boss the British ambassador Sir Frederic, Walter Hampden, when he was outside of his office, which seems like all the time, attending as well as entertaining parties and state dinners.Getting in touch with the attaché of the German ambassador to Turkey Count Von Papan, John Wengraf, a guy named L.C Moyzisch, played by Oskar Karlweis, Diello later given the code name, by Ambassador Von Papan, "Cicero". Diallo Impresses the German diplomat so much that Van Papan get's in touch with Berlin so he can get the go ahead to do business with him but at a price: 20,000 in British Pound Sterling. Deillo's plan at first works flawlessly with him getting his hands on every piece of information, that always top secret, that's sent to the British ambassador. Photographing the documents and, after getting paid by the German government, Diello then sends it on to his contact,Moyzisch, in the German embassy.Despite his ability to be secretive Deillo foolishly gets involved with the stateless and almost destitute, the Germans confiscated all her property money and holdings back in Poland, Polish Countess Anna Staviska, Danielle Darrieux. Deillo had the hots for Anna since he met her back in London before the war as her late husbands valet. Being a bit too trustworthy in a business, spying,where trust is a dirty word Diello lets his both pants and guard down and gets it where it hurts him the most both in his wallet and bank account. Diello gets zinged not only by scheming and double-crossing Countess Staviska but the German Government as well,in the end which will, like it did Diello, completely blow you away.Tense filled and exciting movie about spying that has going for it the fact that it was based on a true story where more then anything else we see just how true the saying "Truth is stranger then fiction" really is. Diello has nerves of steel in his nerve-wrecking attempts to get a hold of British Military secrets that if caught can have him take a long walk and short drop at the end of a rope. Manipulating both sides, the German & British, in keeping him alive and free in order to find out whom his contacts are and how much he actually received and sold to both warring parties, the British and Germans, has Deillo playing for high stakes in both money as well as his life.Even though Diello screwed a lot of people in the movie he got the royal screwing in the end with his lover the two-timing Countess Staviska checking out on him and going to neutral Switzerland with all his cash, 130,000 Pound Sterling, just when he was about to check out together with her to South America. Diello gets in touch with his contact Moyzisch, whom he'd since discarded, for one last deal in getting him, and his German boss', for a cool 100,000 Pound Sterling the plan to invade Europe by the allies, Operation Overlord, and open up a second front against Germany later that spring.By sticking his neck out in getting the information from the British ambassador's office safe, that was rigged with an alarm, Diello blew his cover and was now a marked man by both his former employer the British Government as well as his collaborators The Germans. The two were tricked, by the sneaky Countess Staviska, into thinking that Diello was working either for the British or Germans as a double-agent giving both sides bogus information. This miscalculation on the Germans part had them throw away the actual plan by the British and US to invade France in June 1944 which if they believed and acted on it the Germans may well have prevented the allies from invading and conquering Western Europe. At the same time, with a second front no longer a reality, The Germans would have been able to defeat the Red Army and thus win the second World War.One of the best spy films ever made not only because of the superior acting, especially by James Mason as Diello/Cicero, editing and directing. The very fact that it really happened shows just how close Hitler's Germany was in winning the Second World War even as late as the spring of 1944 when most people in the allies camp , both in government and the military, thought that the war was just about over and that Nazi Germany would be defeated by Christmas 1944 at the latest. Nazi Germany in fact held out together with it's Fhurer Adolph Hitler for five more long brutal and bloody months with just the Western Allies alone, the British & Americans, suffering well over 300,000 casualties in the desperate,by the defending Germans, and no holds bar, by both sides, battle of Western Germany until the war finally ended in Germanys total defeat in the spring of 1945.

theowinthrop In the period between 1918 - 1939 most of the countries in Eastern Europe were notable for the strongman dictatorships that had arisen out of the ashes of the First World War. Except for Czechoslovakia and the doomed Baltic trio of states and Finland and Austria (for awhile), Poland, Hungary, Italy, and the Balkan states all became dictatorships. One might, on the surface, have added the former Ottoman Empire now Turkey. Certainly Turkey had some black marks against it: the Armenian massacres in the World War, and the brutal massacre of Greeks at Smyrna in 1922. But aside from those, Turkey surprised everyone. It's strongman leader, Mustapha Kemal (a.k.a. Kemal Attaturk) was determined to make Turkey a strong western country. To this day the military (from which Kemal came out of) has remained pro-Western, and been pushing (despite difficulties with Armenia, Greece, the Kurds, and Muslim fundamentalists) to keep modernizing Turkey. His (Kemal's) was the only positive spin on a dictatorship from Eastern Europe in that period. Kemal was lucky that he had a keen lieutenant and successor named Ismet Inonu. Ismet was as determined to continue Kemal's goals after his friend's death in 1938. One goal that both of them had discussed and agreed upon was that Turkey was not going to be pulled into any further nonsense that it could not afford to get involved in. This meant that if there was any major war hitting Europe again (and both Kemal and Ismet fully knew one was on the way after 1933) Turkey was going to be neutral. This was, on the surface, surprising and disappointing to the Axis when war came in 1939 - 1940. Hitler figured that, as Turkey had been allied to Germany in World War I it would be allied again in World War II. Actually Kemal (and Ismet) were less than enchanted by such an idea. Kemal made his reputation as a great military hero by his leadership against the British at Gallipoli. While the German commander Liman Von Sanders, took kudos for much of the triumph there, Kemal fumed at this - he knew that Von Sanders made several severe blunders that cost Turkish lives, and that he looked at the Turks as cannon fodder. Kemal was determined that no Turk would die for Germany again. Ismet swore the same thing.It is for this reason that Turkey is neutral from 1939 to 1945 (as De Velera's Eire was also neutral). This meant that the embassies of all the major powers were active in Ankara during the war, and that much spy activity was going on there as a result. Hollywood did take notice of it twice (as far as I can recall) - in 1943 when Warner Brothers made a film of Eric Ambler's 1940 novel BACKGROUND TO DANGER about a German plot to force Turkey into the war as an Axis ally (Sidney Greenstreet as the Nazi agent against George Raft as the American one), and the 1942 film JOURNEY INTO FEAR, where German agents are after an American engineer (Joseph Cotton) who has been arming Turkish ships. That too was from an Eric Ambler novel.With this as the background, you can suddenly understand the story of "Operation Cicero". Ulysses Diello (James Mason) in the film (his real name was Bazna) is personal valet to the British Ambassador to Turkey (Walter Hampden). But he is gifted spy, and has proof of it which he takes to the German embassy's espionage chief Moyzisch (Oskar Karlweis). Actually the information by itself would not unduly impress Moyzisch (it could be a plant for all that), but Diello opens the embassy safe while Moyzisch is out of the room. He knows that in Germany, since 1933, Hitler's birthday or his date of coming to power are the universal combinations favored in government organizations for their safes.The pieces of information that Cicero (the code name for Mason) checks out - although there is always a lingering sense of doubt by Moyzisch's higher ups in German intelligence. They continue paying Mason in British pounds (he may give them the information, but Mason has little faith the Germans are going to win the war). In the meantime the leak has been noticed by British intelligence, which sends Michael Rennie to investigate. Soon he begins to concentrate on Mason. Mason feels he still can carry on his espionage business. However Mason has started romancing a Countess (Danielle Darrieux) whom he once knew as a servant. She may be playing him for a sucker - but even if she is, he is determined to carry off the greatest espionage coup of all time. He is aware of some large scale Allied invasion being planned - and a copy of the plans is at the British embassy.The film shows what actually happened. He did get the information regarding "Operation Overlord" and sold it to the Germans. And their subsequent use of this masterstroke demonstrated again how smart Cicero was in judging German "intelligence". It is an exciting spy thriller, and (on the whole) factual. Mason, Rennie, Darrieux, Hampden give pretty good accounts for themselves in this film, and Joseph Mankiewicz' script and direction are excellent. A highly worthy film to be seen.