Carol Reed | Night Train to Munich / 1940

a fine country

by Douglas Messerli

 

Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder (screenplay, base on a novel by Gordon Wellesley), Carol Reed (director) Night Train to Munich / 1940

 

Carol Reed’s film Night Train to Munich shares a great deal in common with Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, released two years earlier. It shares some of the same authors, some of the same actors (Margaret Lockwood and the cricket enthusiasts Charters and Caldicott [Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne]), a long ride through a politically hostile territory, and focus on British spies. Both films also share the genres of adventure and comedy.

    Yet Reed’s film, poised on the days just before Britain declared war on Germany, is far darker and more complex, and, except for the presence of the great Dame May Whitty in the earlier work, is far better acted and realized. Yet some critics of the day were quite brutal about the similarities, dismissing—as did Michael Wood—the latter work as an “ironic remake,” or, as even as the publicity for the second film proclaimed, describing Night Train to Munich as a “sequel.” And until Criterion’s release this year (2016), the film had been seldom seen.

     Reed’s work expands the rather rickety, long train ride wherein the “lady of Hitchcock’s title, Miss Froy, vanishes from sight, into a much more menacing series of events, including a hurried escape from Prague, as it is over-run by Nazi troops, by a metallurgist Axel Bomasch (James Harcourt), imprisonment in a concentration camp for his daughter Anna (Margaret Lockwood), and her and another internee, Karl Marsen’s (Paul von Henreid) escape back to England in its first several frames.

     Their escape, moreover, is an elaborate hoax, staged by the Nazis in order that Bomasch’s daughter might lead them to her father, the Henreid character actually being a Nazi Captain with whom Anna has now developed a relationship. Through Marsen’s suggestion, Anna posts an ad in the newspaper announcing, through a family nickname, that she is now in England; and an anonymous phone call leads her to the singing hall of Gus Bennett (Rex Harrison), who while pretending to be a carefree singer is actually, as Dickie Randall, is a secret agent for the British ministry.

     Anna does reconnect with her father a Bennett’s place, but is followed by Marsen and his men, and taken aboard with her father on a German U-boat bound for Berlin, where Bomasch is threatened if he does not reveal his secret formula for a high protective metal coating—to be used for German armored tanks. Anna is returned to a concentration camp.

     Bennett/Dickie Randall, having survived the attacks of the German spies, is now determined to ravel to Germany where he hopes, somehow, to bring the Bomaschs back to England. How is never explained. But he is fluent in German and is able to bluff his way into the major headquarters as a German officer, where he quickly makes connection, once again, with Anna and her father.

    Pretending to once have had an affair with her in the Sudetenland, he convinces Marsen and others that he will be able to gain her confidence and compliance, leading them to the father’s secret.

     The only hitch—and yes, there’s always a hitch in such works—is that Hitler orders the Bomaschs immediately to Munich; hence the title. Fortunately, Dickie is allowed to accompany them on them on this frightening voyage, making up a plan of escape en route. The only problem is that the crazed cricket-goers, Charters and Caldicott, traveling on the same train, recognize Dickie as a former classmate, unintentionally alerting the Nazi Captain to Dickie’s true identity.

     Overhearing the Nazi’s call to headquarters, the silly duo—who read both in the earlier Hitchcock film and in this movie as gay men—traveling, eating, and sleeping together, as well as obsessively following the cricket matches—this time come to see their duty, warning Dickie and helping him to overcome the Nazi guards.

     Reaching Munich, Dickie and his charges catch a car manned by a sympathetic German spy and race to the Swiss border, catching a ski-lift gondola into freedom, gunshots being exchanged along the way.

     If this all sounds a bit complex and slightly preposterous, that is just my point. This isn’t the simple train ride hide-and-seek of Hitchcock’s witty “prequel.” Reed’s work is a high complex thriller that delights in its various twists and turns, not just of plot, but of language as well.

     Nearly everybody in the film says one thing while meaning quite another. The slightly whiny-voiced Dickie (given Harrison’s usual slightly peeved pitch of voice) successfully pretends to be not only a Nazi, but a great lover—always a difficult role for him despite his apparent womanizing in real life. Anna is asked to show her love for him, affectionately cooing over a man we can never imagine her ever coming to love (as she empathetically tells him: “You know, if a woman every loved you like you love yourself, it would be one of the great romances of history!”). Marsen is a more suitable lover even if he is a Nazi liar and a determined murderer. And the rather bumbling elder Bomasch, who seems slight out of the loop with reality, final does very much come to perceive the gravity of the situation. Even the cricket-obsessed queer boys suddenly come alive a British defenders, doing their duty and then some.

     Early on, a Nazi officer calls to task a fellow worker for declaring that, given the current bureaucratic conditions, that “This is a find country to live in.” But the work escapes punishment by declaring that, no, he had declared it to be “a fine country to live in,” the emphasis being on the positive instead of the negative.

     Everything about the film, in short, is constantly shifting. The truth simply cannot be pinned down people and situations not ever being what they first appear to be. No, muses the Nazi office worker, once his underling leaves, “This is a bloody awful country to live in.”

    The “tricks” and “theatrics” of Hitchcock’s likeable earlier film are, here, turned into for more intricate alterations in behavior and psychology, the kind of shifts in personality and perception we witness in Reed’s later films such as The Fallen Idol, The Third Man, and Our Man in Havana.

   If the plot is rather creaky at times and, often, unbelievable, it nonetheless is a fairly deep contemplation on the human propensity for dualities. People in Reed’s films are never quite what they seem to be, and are even less sure of what might be “reality.”

      Actually, I would argue that both Hitchcock and Reed were more influenced by their times than by each other. The same month, August, that Reed released his film in the United Kingdom, Hitchcock release a move in the US far more similar to Reed’s work, Foreign Correspondent, than had been his The Lady Vanishes. In 1940 it had suddenly become a world where a little old lady’s memory of a song could no longer save the planet.

    

Los Angeles, October 5, 2016

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2016).  

Sining Xiang | Foreign Uncle / 2021

a child leads the way

by Douglas Messerli

 

Sining Xiang (screenwriter and director) Foreign Uncle / 2021 [20 minutes]

 

In the past few years, we have been blessed by The New Yorker magazines sponsoring and distributing films, many of which have LGBTQ+ content.

    Foreign Uncle written and directed by Sining Xiang is one of the best of these. In this film, Sining (Li Li), living in the US, returns home to China with the man he describes as his American friend, Patrick (Patrick Boyd) actually his gay lover.

    The family, ruled over by the grandmother (Li Kui) and Sining’s mother (Ying Wang) and her sister Xin Tong, are delighted to welcome the friend, who brings a gift for Sining’s 7-year-old nephew Naonao (the charming child actor Haozhe Wang).

   The trio have cooked up some Chinese delights, which together they enjoy upon Sining and Patrick’s arrival, Sining lovingly hugging and playing with his nephew, while Naonao equally takes to Patrick, describing him almost from the beginning his American uncle, even though the women, to who Sining has not come out, have no idea just how correct their young charge is in his enthusiastic greeting.

     The meal goes beautifully, with Sining’s mother already trying to hookup the unmarried Patrick with a local Chinese woman. Patrick, answering through Sining’s translations is charming and his presence leads to many toasts.

     But underneath, obviously, he encourages his companion to come out to his mother so to not hurt her later. Sining, however, is simply not ready, nor our, apparently, his extended family members.

     They arrange to share the couch, offering the bed to Patrick and Naonao’s room to Sining, Naonao begging to share his new uncle’s bed, but warned, as he is about nearly everything he says, to simply behave.

      Sining and Patrick to accompany him to his ping-pong lessons, where the boy continues to show off his American uncle.

       The uncomfortable sleeping arrangements are dealt with, but late in the night, Sining slips into Patrick’s bed where they watch an internet movie together. But when morning comes, and Naonao rushes into the room, it is clear they have fallen to sleep in each other’s arms. Ying Wang, trying to scold Naonao off, discovers them just as they awaken, shocked by what she sees. Sining attempts to explain that they simply fell to sleep while watching a movie, but it is clear to his mother what the situation entails and in a conversation only in Mandarin Chinese it is clear that she is furious. Over breakfast she breaks down and leaves the table, the other following in anger, leaving only a perplexed Patrick and Naonao at the table, both high disconcerted with the fuss and noise around them.

      Patrick leaves just to wander off, without knowing that Naonao quickly follows after, meeting up with him and demanding, again only in Chinese, that he join him in seeing Xinghai Square. Patrick, thinking he is simply leading him to his ping-pong practice, follows and is wowed by the shopping square. Soon they return to the streets where Patrick buys the boy delicious street foods never before permitted for him to eat. They visit a vast seaside space finally, where a couple ask to have their picture taken with the odd couple, before the boy is ready to return home with his now very dear American uncle, not a titular title any longer, but a representation of a true bonding.

     What has happened at home in their absence, or how their return may effect the future is not established. But we do know that finally Patrick has been fully accepted into the family by the most non-judgmental and purest figure among them.

 

Los Angeles, May 7, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (2026).

 

Tor Iben | The Passenger / 2012

nick, the strangler

by Douglas Messerli

 

Tor Iben (screenwriter and director) The Passenger / 2012

 

An attractive young man, Nick (Niklas Peters) is in Berlin for a couple weeks, purportedly to look for a condo for his wealthy father. Philipp (Urs Stämpfli), meanwhile, just happens to have an extra room to rent. When Nick shows up to see the room, Philipp inexplicably has “a good feeling” about the newcomer, as he tells his girlfriend Lilli (Lyn Femme), who is skeptical until she meets the stud.

     Unfortunately, we’ve already been told by the central character’s voice that he is a cursed serial killer, who as soon as he develops a close sexual relationship with others is forced to kill them in fairly ritualistic manners usually involving covering himself in their blood. Why German writer/director Tor Iben has been so determined to tell us this from the outset we can’t know, but it essentially takes all the mystery of what bills itself as a thriller. Not that we wouldn’t soon realize what’s in store from other events, as we watch this bisexual killer seduce a cute schoolboy from the local university, playing a kind of delicious hiding game to lure him on, and, after a couple of sexual outings in a park, strangling him to death.

      Phillip also picks up a transvestite prostitute (Thary Plast IC), killing her without even a second round.

      Meanwhile, he makes friends with Philipp, who although straight, photographs only males, and who quickly makes it apparent, through his photographs of his new friend, that he harbors homoerotic if not fully homosexual tendencies. Nick wastes no time after meeting Lilli, whom he quickly beds. Since he appears to truly like both of his new friends, and Lilli, an actor, will not commit to a relationship and Philipp, although clearly attracted to Nick, steers clear of sex, Nick isn’t quite ready, apparently, to kill off this couple.

      And most the rest of the movie—when it doesn’t throw in the ineffective bumbles of the Berlin police to track down the murderer—concerns the budding gay sexuality of Philipp and the increasing discomfit of Lilli with Nick as a heterosexual lover—particularly after he appears to have a serious nose bleeding incident, which we realize is merely the blood of someone he has recently murdered.

      Since we have no idea why this equal opportunity strangler feels compelled to kill and because the script seems disinterested in exploring his sexual lusts in connection to his own multiple sexuality along with his obvious commitment to the process of seduction as opposed to ongoing relationships—all of which might have led us through multiple psychological explanations for his compulsions—we are left with simply counting down the moments until he will turn on his friends.

      At one point when Nick and Phillip are horseplaying together in a stream, we imagine he will drown the photographer, but instead he saves his life, Phillip falling even more in love with his savior and the two moving even closer to sexual interaction. At several points, moreover, he seems about to strangle Lilli in their love-making. But each time Nick pulls back, perhaps just because of the director’s need to extend the playing time of his movie.

      But finally, given that Phillip never seems to break through his heterosexual closet and Lilli reveals that she has never truly felt love for her sexual seducer, we begin not only to lose interest in their interactions but to wonder what this film is truly trying to tell us. Will Phillip’s and Lilli’s reticence save their lives, while those who simply give away their sex remain doomed once they have met up with Nick?

      Critic Michael D. Klemm expresses similar feelings in his 2014 review:

       

“I am not sure what the point of this movie was. A cautionary tale? Beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing? This is a film about a serial killer of whom we know nothing. The Showtime series, Dexter, provided a very elaborate – and fascinating - backstory that made it absolutely clear why Dexter had to kill. He was also a great antihero because the people he killed were murderers and child molesters who deserved their fate. The Passenger features a charismatic monster who kills innocent people for no reason. There is no insight into what makes his mind work at all. The film begins with him delivering a nonsensical monologue about how his “lust to kill” is “connected to certain star constellations” (and also the planet Pluto) and how maybe if he finds a pattern he can “control the lust.” And that is the entire psychological motivation that this film provides. Oh, and he has bad dreams now and then, usually after killing someone.”

      It appears Nick, the Strangler, has no more motivation for his killings than Jack, the Ripper.

     Finally, any suspense remaining shift from our wondering when he kill his now close friends, but if he will be compelled to do them in, particularly as long as Phillip remains a non-sexual partner in their Jules and Jim-like threesome.

      After Nick and Phillip have a slight row, Nick goes off, returning to enter Phillip’s bedroom. Phillip apologizes for his behavior. Nick moves closer, beginning to stroke Phillip’s neck and cheek, while Phillip for the first time seems almost ready to offer up what appears to be the inevitable homosexual kiss between the two.

     Is that enough, a final abandonment to seduction, for Nick to follow through with the strangulation which we have been waiting for? Apparently Nick has perceived Phillip’s reaction as the total acceptance of the sexual action and now doesn’t even need the sex to give him permission for the murder. It’s clearly not cock or pussy he’s after but just the sexual desertion of self to lust.

      Lilli’s death follows soon after, and since her involvement with Nick was totally sexual, he goes through the entire ritual of hanging her upon a park tree, draining out her blood upon his body, and washing it away in the nearby river.

      Oddly, the director seems himself to have finally fallen in love with Nick, his camera watching closely as he showers, revealing for the first time his character as fully nude with a sizeable penis.

      When the police, finding both bodies, finally put the facts together, Nick, on his way to Paris, is already at the train station, where he meets another couple, who look even far more innocent than Lilli and Phillip and ready to play along in a real sexual threesome that might, in fact, have resulted in far more interesting if shorter film.

 

Los Angeles, October 19, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2023).