MASK OF DIMITRIOS, THE (director: Jean Negulesco; screenwriter: Frank Gruber/from Eric Ambler's novel "A Coffin for Dimitrios"; cinematographer: Arthur Edeson; cast: Sydney Greenstreet (Mr. Peters), Peter Lorre (Cornelius Latimer Leyden), Zachary Scott (Dimitrios Makropoulos), Faye Emerson (Irana Preveza),Victor Francen (Wladislaw Grodek), Steven Geray ( Bulic), Kurt Katch (Col. Haki), Marjorie Hoshelle (Anna Bulic), George Tobias (Fedor Muishkin), Eduardo Ciannelli (Marukakis), Florence Bates (Madame Chavez), David Hoffman (Konrad), Monte Blue (Abdul), 1944)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Warner Bros. could crank-out smashing suspense films like this one on a regular basis during the 1940s. With the war on and many of the leading men in the service, there was a place for character actors such as the Fat Man (Sydney Greenstreet)-and-The Little Man (Peter Lorre), to play together in starring roles, without romantic women co-stars. The handsome Zachary Scott made his starring debut in this one. Faye Emerson had recently married President Roosevelt's son, and therefore received top-billing, even though she had only a minor part.
The film was faithfully adapted from the novel of British author, Eric Ambler, and had more of a European feel to it than the ordinary American noir, though because of the dark lighting and the shadowy photography of renown film cinematographer Arthur Edeson- he also did "The Maltese Falcon," the film was able to retain its noir credentials despite lacking the usual cynicism of noir.
The film opens as we are told of how evil a man Dimitrios Makropoulos (Zachary Scott) is and onscreen it is written 1938. The next shot is of a Turkish beach and the discovery of Dimitrios' bloated body, with stab wounds, found as it is washed ashore.
Visiting Istanbul, attending a party, is a meek mystery writer from Holland, Cornelius Latimer Leyden (Peter Lorre). The head of the secret police, Colonel Haki (Katch), a fan of the writer, greets him at the party and tells him about the body that just washed ashore and a little something of Dimitrios, who was known internationally as a murderer, pimp, womanizer, smuggler, blackmailer, double-crosser, political assassin, spy, and thief. He was a treacherous man, a man without a heart, a soul, or a conscience. This intrigues the author, who accompanies the colonel to the police station before the body is disposed of. Leyden is interested enough in Dimitrios, that he decides to use him as a subject for his next book. All he has to do, is track down his life, find out who he was and why he did what he did. The colonel provides the writer with the dossier the police have on him and all the places he travelled to and committed his serious crimes. He tells him that the police were after him for 20 years but were never able to arrest him or get a photograph of him.
Leyden decides to go to Smyrna first, which in 1922, was a place under martial-law. The film uses flashback to tell the story. He is first seen in desperate need of money to leave the country. But he finds a perfect pigeon to rob, Konrad (Hoffman), whom he tempts by offering to sell him some stolen goods. He brings a partner, Abdul (Blue), along to the victim's apartment to help him rob the fence, but instead of just robbing him as planned, he knifes the fence to death and steals all his money. Abdul did not bargain for murder and is caught by the police and hung, while Dimitrios escapes to Athens.
Lorre prepares himself to travel through Smyrna, Athens, Sofia, Belgrade, Geneva, and finally to Paris, in order to trace the sinister criminal's path.
On board a train to Sophia, a portly, large-framed man, with a unique chuckle, Mr. Peters (Sydney Greenstreet), will share a train compartment with him. Peters is reading a book entitled "Pearls of Everyday Wisdom," while Leyden goes to sleep. He will mention to Leyden, the next morning, "There is not enough kindness in the world," and recommend a hotel to him on his stop in Sophia, one in which he will enter when Leyden is out and whereby he will thoroughly search his room. When Leyden returns, he is confronted by Peters pointing a gun at him and questioning him about what he knows about Dimitrios. Peters is interested that Leyden saw the body and that he had found it with no money on him and that he was wearing shabby clothes with the name Dimitrios sewn inside the coat. He proposes that they form an alliance and he will help Leyden get more information on Dimitrios from someone who knew him quite well, Wladislaw Grodek (Victor Francen), who now resides in Geneva. He tells him you will only get into trouble by going to Belgrade, that Grodek was a former master spy and knows what you want to know better than anyone else. He also offers him half a million French francs, as his share of the loot, of a scheme Peters has cooked up to get money for the information the two of them posssess.
While Leyden was in Sophia, before he met Peters in the hotel, he met a writer friend of his (Ciannelli ), who introduces him to the attractive Irana Preveza (Faye) in the smoky cabaret she operates, and she reluctantly tells her hard-luck story of meeting Dimitrios in 1923 and falling in love with him, despite knowing how despicable he was. After being broke and about to be turned over to the police by his landlord, he sneaks into her apartment, which is in the same dumpy hotel that he lives in, and she offers him a meal and a little money. The next day he returns with a large amount of money and pays her back with considerable interest, having blackmailed her rich married lover. He will eventually have to leave the country when he attempts to assassinate the head of Bulgaria, borrowing a huge sum of money from Irena, after she lies to the police to provide him with an alibi. She will never see him again or be paid back.
In Geneva, armed with the letter of introduction Peters gave him, Leyden finds out from Grodek how Dimitrios cruelly worked an espionage racket in Belgrade, by talking an insignificant, mousy clerk (Geray) in the war office into stealing documents of a minefield operation. He did it by trickily getting the clerk into gambling debts and forcing him to betray his country. The clerk ended up shooting himself, not able to live with his cowardly deed of betrayal to his country, in a time of conflict with Italy. As for Grodek, who was partners with Dimitrios in this endeavor, the stalworth Dimitrios double-crossed him and robbed the minefield plans, selling it to a higher bidder.
Leyden tells the amiable Peters, who was involved with Dimitrios in an earlier smuggling operation, one in which Dimitrios turned in all his cronies to save his own skin, that he is not interested in the blackmail money, but will meet him in his Paris apartment in order to get the full story. At last, in Paris, Peters tells Leyden that Dimitrios faked his death, that it is a man called Konstantin Gollos who was found on the beach, a member of their smuggling ring, and that Dimitrios is alive in Paris. There, they meet the suave and curt Dimitrios, who cuts a ruthlessly dashing figure, as Peters tells him they want a million francs in return for their silence in the matter of his faked death.
When Peters gets the money, he is gleeful for the moment, as the money is photographed as looking huge onscreen, looking more like monopoly money than real. But, surprisingly, Dimitrios appears in the doorway of their room and shoots Peters. He then goes to shoot Leyden, but the little man manages to knock the gun out of his hand and Peters gets the gun and points it at the cowering Dimitrios, begging for his life. When Leyden goes to get the police, offscreen we hear the shots being fired by Peters, and soon the police come to arrest him. It is implied, by the glow on his face, that he's more glad that he killed Dimitrios than he is that he got the money. Peters tells Leyden, as he is being led away by the police, to send him a copy of the novel he will write about Dimitrios, saying: "I'll have a lot of time to read it where I'm going." He adds as the film dissolves: "You see, there's not enough kindness in the world."
The film deftly mixes fact with fiction, as Ambler's unremorseful anti-hero is based upon one of the world's greatest schemers, Basil Zaharoff, billionaire munitions king, whose early career mirrors the one of scheming Dimitrios Makropoulos.The rich flavor in the film comes from the lead character actors, who are indescribably witty and tacky, displaying good chemistry in working with each other, whose characterizations are most striking. They, along with the strong performance by Scott, give this pleasant thriller the life it needs to sustain it. The story itself, is too superficial to be anything more than a B type of programmer. But the film had a certain style to it that more than made up for the awkward telling of the story's ending.
REVIEWED ON 1/25/2000 GRADE: B-
Dennis Schwartz: " Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
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