Background to Danger (1943)

Absolutely Fantastic

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Completely Forgettable, if not for all the "Names" attached. The "A" list ranges from the Writers (credited or otherwise, the Director, and the Stars (top and under-billed). It culminates in one of the most stilted, interwoven, and flat looking Movies to come out of the "War Years" Propaganda assembly line.While all the parts are here to manufacture at least an Entertaining Flag Waiver, it is surprisingly a Lemon. There is hardly a Swastika in sight (maybe a Flag or two here and there) and the Nazis are mostly Semi-Shady Characters that are hardly threatening. Even the Cultured Fat Man is more amusing than intimidating.Not a Dud, but everyone on screen seems uninspired, considering the fate of the Free World is at hand, and it looks too Studio Bound (except for one accelerating car chase) to have an International feel. This one is for checklist completest only.

This film shares several things with Casablanca. It has several members from that cast with some changes. It deals with Nazi's & intrigue though this time in Angora, Turkey instead of Morroco. Peter Lorre manages to get shot in both movies. Backgound To Danger is actually based upon a novel by the same name. Both movies came off Warner Brothers war propaganda assembly line. The differences are striking though. Even though this one has a higher power Director, Raoul Walsh, & a higher power writer, William Faulkner, involved in the film, it just simply is not as good. George Raft just isn't Bogart and Ingrid Bergman is no where to be found. Interesting it is the very next film after Casablanca for Greenstreet. This movie is entertaining, & it has a good cast. For some reason the script is where this falls short. Casablanca, just seems to be better on all counts.

I liked this film although there were certainly many better for the time. It is the usual war time movie without being too much like the rest.How can you go wrong watching Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre together? Greenstreet is simply magnetic, and I was stunned to find out he debuted in films with Casablanca only a year before.I kept thinking during the movie how much better it would have been with someone else besides Raft in the title role, he is pretty wooden. I am not sure where his performance ranks with his other roles. I hope they were better but doubt that they were. I don't watch many of them normally.Brenda Marshall provides window dressing mostly and the ending smacks of a cheap knockoff attempt, but the rest wasn't too bad.

It's now part of Hollywood lore how George Raft immeasurably aided the career of Humphrey Bogart by turning down High Sierra, The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. After the last one I guess Raft thought he'd go for a Casablanca type story and the film of Eric Ambler's Background to Danger seemed like a good bet. If working with Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre worked for Bogey...........Background to Danger only confirmed Raft's wisdom about trying to stick to what he could handle. Had he been in Casablanca, the film today would be a routine action adventure picture not the cinema classic it is.According to a biography of Raft, Peter Lorre was stealing scenes all over the place and blew cigarette smoke in Raft's face causing him to lose concentration. After repeated requests to stop doing it, Raft clocked Lorre on the chin and that settled the problems they had. On the set that is, on screen Raft registers no presence at all with his fabled co-stars.Raft is an American agent, Greenstreet a Nazi, and Brenda Marshall and Lorre are a brother and sister team of Soviet agents all looking for a forged document about false Soviet invasion plans for Turkey. The action starts in Turkey's capital of Ankara and ends up in the city of Istanbul. Background to Danger had to be the first American made film based in Ankara. Before the overthrow of the Ottoman Empire, Ankara barely passed for an oasis. Mustapha Kemal selected it for his capital because of its central location on the Anatolian peninsula. The city grew exponentially between the wars and Turkish neutrality in World War II kept up the growth rate though the Ankara we see here is depicted on the back lot of Warner Brothers studio.All the neutral capitals in the World War II years were good subjects for espionage films. Everyone of them could have been described like Ankara as a city of a thousand plots. Too bad a better film couldn't have been done here.