Journey into Fear **** (1942, Joseph Cotten, Dolores del Rio, Orson Welles, Ruth Warrick, Agnes Moorehead) – Classic Movie Review 2412

Norman Foster’s nailbiting 1942 film noir adventure thriller Journey into Fear bears more than a hint of the stamp of Orson Welles, who started the production, directed his own scenes, assembled a lot of his players and co-wrote the screenplay.

Director Norman Foster’s nailbiting 1942 film noir adventure thriller Journey into Fear bears more than a hint of the directorial stamp of Orson Welles, who started the production, directed his own scenes, assembled a lot of his Mercury Theatre and movie stock-company players and co-wrote the screenplay (with the star Joseph Cotten) from Eric Ambler’s novel.

The film mostly follows the plot of the book but the hero is changed to an American engineer. Welles was set to direct, but apparently had to leave that aspect to Foster due to his next commitment as he was in a rush to depart for Brazil to film It’s All True.

Cotten is top billed as Howard Graham, the US Navy engineer with a military secret, on the run from the Gestapo and sweet-faced killer Peter Banat (Jack Moss). Returning to America with his wife after a conference abroad, Graham is pursued by Nazi agents out to kill him. He flees his hotel and jumps on board a ship, but the agents have followed him.

Welles enjoys himself in a bravura star support turn as the monstrous Turkish secret police chief Colonel Haki and Dolores del Rio is suitably exotic as Josette Martel, the leopard-woman love interest.

While the screenplay occasionally gets too tangled and wordy, what can count in all but name as Welles’s third feature proves a superior World War Two espionage thriller, overflowing with finely tuned characters, tense atmosphere, taut handling and Welles’s trademark visual flourishes. Indeed, the film looks nothing like any of Foster’s other films, but Welles stated that he did not direct any part of the film and his friend Foster was the director, though he also said that that the person directing was whoever was closest to the camera.

Welles is certainly responsible for the pre-credits sequence showing the assassin preparing a gun while listening to an old gramophone which then starts to skip. The camera floats up to his apartment room from outside in the style of crane shots in Citizen Kane.

Also in the vintage cast are Ruth Warrick, Agnes Moorehead, Everett Sloane, Hans Conried, Eustace Wyatt, Frank Readick, Edgar Barrier, Jack Durant, Stefan Schnabel, Robert Meltzer as the ship baggageman, Richard Bennett. Several cast members are Mercury Theatre staff, including Herb Drake (theatre publicist), Shifra Haran (secretary), Eddie Howard (chauffeur), Robert Meltzer (writer), Bill Roberts (publicist), and Jack Moss (business manager).

In 2005, the original European release print was shown at a Welles film retrospective at the Locarno International Film Festival. It lacks the narration and ending of the American version and includes about six minutes of footage deleted by the studio, RKO Pictures.

A script of the film was sold for $7,500 and a collection of 180 stills and production photos sold for $2,375 at an auction on April 26 2014. They were found in boxes and trunks of Welles’s personal possessions by his daughter Beatrice Welles.

It’s All True, comprising three stories about Latin America, became an unfinished Orson Welles feature film after it was terminated by RKO. Most of the shot footage is destroyed or lost, but the surviving footage is housed in the UCLA Film and Television Archive nitrate vaults.

Dolores del Rio’s romance with Orson Welles, who called her ‘the most exciting woman I’ve ever met’, caused her 1941 divorce from second husband Cedric Gibbons, the top art director and production designer at MGM studios. Her Hollywood career was over and she returned to Mexico in 1942.

The year 2015 is the centenary of Welles’s birth on May 6 1915 and the 30th anniversary of his death on October 10 1985, aged 70.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2412

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