Melding plot elements of
Citizen Kane (1941),
Casablanca (1942), and even
The Third Man (1949), Jean Negulesco’s
The Mask of Dimitrios follows the trek of Dutch mystery writer Cornelius Leyden (Peter Lorre) through Istanbul, Athens, Sofia, and Paris as he investigates the life story of recently deceased assassin, spy, and smuggler Dimitrios Makropoulos (Zachary Scott). Intrigued by Makropoulos’ criminal history and encouraged by the strange Mr. Peters (Sydney Greenstreet), who promises him a financial reward, Leyden interviews a series of Makropoulos’s victims, including jilted girlfriend Ivana (Faye Emerson) and former spymaster Wladislaw Grodek (Victor Francen). When Leyden and Peters finally arrive in Paris, a big surprise awaits. Dimitrios is a tailor-made role for Zachary Scott, who excels as shady, duplicitous cads; in certain scenes, Edeson shoots him as just a pallid face floating in a sea of black, his beady eyes marked like a raccoon’s. Negulesco paints the exotic European settings with a shadowy brush, particularly the dreary Bulgarian hotel and the final Paris sequence where the noir aesthetic reaches its peak (and Deutsch’s score becomes riveting).
