Journey into Fear is beautifully filmed, has great acting, and an engaging story (written by Joseph Cotten) with an international arms deal that could apply to today . It has the elements of film noir: a voice over narration and low key photography. But as a film noir, it falls short. It feels more like a whodunnit, or rather, who will do it, and it’s lacking strong female characters. Howard’s relationship with the dancer feels more like a MacGuffin, an excuse for him to write a letter to his wife so that we can have a voice over.
It’s a beautiful film with some holes where the mercury escapes, but nevertheless worth watching, if only for Orson Welles’s performance as a Turkish captain.
3.5 stars.
In Norman Foster’s Journey Into Fear, an entertaining adaptation of Eric Ambler’s popular novel, Joseph Cotten stars as Howard Graham, just your average American ballistics weaponry engineer who’s targeted for termination by the Nazis during a visit to Istanbul with his wife Stephanie (Ruth Warrick) during World War II. Orson Welles, who also produced the film under tumultuous circumstances, plays the larger than life Colonel Haki, who warns Graham about the assassin in pursuit and demands he separate from Stephanie and escape across the Black Sea to the Soviet city of Batumi; the rickety ship is also transporting an ecosystem of animals that recall Noah’s ark and a mini United Nations of peculiar European characters, including, we soon learn, the assassin. The film features plenty of innovative shots involving mirrors and portholes, a fabulous nightclub sequence where we meet the dancer Josette (Dolores Del Rio), and, most impressively, a stunning crane shot (even before the opening credits) that slow zooms through a spotlighted tenement window where the assassin is arming himself to a skipping phonograph recording.
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