Cloak and Dagger Blu-ray Review
The spy who loved.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, May 3, 2013
Years ago I was given a very rare kinescope of an old
Studio One broadcast from 1958, and it came replete with
its original commercials. The show was sponsored by Westinghouse and along with the demonstrations by Betty
Furness
of the latest in home appliances, there was one truly hilarious yet disturbing advertisement for nuclear power where a
nattily dressed gentleman came out and while pointing to a certain item in his hand said, "With just
one
shoebox of
plutonium, we can power a city!" There was an odd love-hate relationship with atomic power that ran rampant through
the United States in the 1950s. On the one hand, nuclear power was touted as a cheap way to power a nation
increasingly reliant on electricity. On the other hand, the Cold War and acquisition of The Bomb by the Soviets meant
that
no one was really sleeping all that soundly unless they were retiring to their concrete and steel bomb shelters every
night.
One of the most fascinating things about 1946's
Cloak and Dagger, a kind of intermittently exciting entry by Fritz
Lang that
nonetheless holds some very real interest, is how prescient it was about this dichotomy. The film revolves around a
rather
unlikely hero, a professor who becomes a sort of globetrotting action hero spy who is attempting to ferret who in the
smoking
ashes
of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy might have access to atomic secrets, but Lang's leftist sentiments peek out of this film
in at least one or two
unusually overt ways, despite the fact that the film was drastically edited (and even reshot) after Lang was through
with principal photography. Even so, this still has elements of being a rather startlingly pacifist screed that must have
confused audiences in 1946 when it
was
released, just at the time when Americans were celebrating their victory in World War II and before much soul
searching
had set in about the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan to end that particular part of the conflict. There's little doubt that
the film also angered the (right leaning) powers that be at Warner Brothers, for the film was evidently wrested from
Lang's control in post production and radically tweaked to remove most (but not
quite all) of its supposedly
objectionable
content.
Cloak and Dagger is supposedly an homage to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the superspy outfit that
presaged the Central Intelligence Agency in the United States. After a brief prologue where we see freedom fighters
getting gunned down by what we assume are Nazi spies, the action shifts to tony Midwestern University where
Professor
Alvah Jesper (Gary Cooper) is visited by an old fraternity buddy of his, who is now in the OSS. The OSS doesn't have
the
expertise to decipher communications they're getting from overseas that indicate that Nazi Germany may be on the
verge
of developing an atomic weapon. While Jesper is a bit cagey at first, even with his old friend, the OSS operative tells
Jesper that he already knows Jesper is working on the supersecret Manhattan Project, and that Jesper, who also can
speak German, is the perfect person to infiltrate Germany to find out how far the Nazis' plans for a bomb have gotten.
The
first step is reconnoitering with an exiled German scientist named Katerin Lodor (Helen Thimig,
Strangers in the Night).
While Jesper is able to meet, albeit briefly, with Lodor and to accede to her wish to return to Germany (she's being
blackmailed), he tells her she should encounter "difficulties" in her research and keep the Allies posted. Before that
plan can be put into action, it turns out Jesper has blown his cover, the Nazis are on to him, and Lodor is kidnapped. A
rescue effort goes horribly wrong, and Jesper decides he needs to move onto an
Italian physicist with whom
Lodor had mentioned she'd been collaborating. That sets up the central section of the film, where Jesper works with a
group of Italian insurgents, including the comely Gina (Lilli Palmer in her American film debut), to get the Italian physicist
Polda (Vladimir Sokoloff) to safety, something the physicist only agrees to if
his kidnapped daughter, being held
by the Nazis, can be freed as well. A plan is hatched by Jesper's American liaison, Pinkie (Robert Alda), while Jesper and
Gina are told to lie low until the daughter can be liberated.
A number of close calls actually keep Jesper and Gina from really settling down, and they of course start developing
romantic feelings for each other as they stay on the run while waiting for Pinkie's coded message to get to them that
Polda's daughter is safe and that Jesper and Gina can rescue Polda himself. Things once again go spectacularly wrong
in a big closing battle, as what seemed to have been a relatively easy endgame turns out to have been ensnared in a
major double cross.
Cloak and Dagger is an obviously truncated film (there's copious evidence that a whole additional reel was
actually filmed but ultimately jettisoned), and there are some continuity issues at work within what's left. But there are
some fascinating relics left behind in the debris. Jesper's big speech when he first talks to his OSS buddy is a doozy,
where Jesper laments man's inability to marshal forces for peace and instead always concentrating on warmongering.
Not so very coincidentally for a man of Lang's philosophical (and religious) bent, the apple makes two very important
appearances as Jesper talks about man's sins in the atomic age.
In terms of the actual film craft, Lang stages some knockout sequences here that are very Hitchcockian. When Jesper is
hiding in the back of a truck with the Italian freedom fighters, the truck stalls and a bunch of soldiers start poking
around, including in the cargo hold. Later, there's a terrific sequence where Jesper notices Polda is being followed just
when he and Gina are ready to rescue the physicist, and an intense skirmish breaks out. This is easily one of the most
Hitchockian sequences outside of the Master's own
oeuvre that I personally can recall, brilliantly edited and
absolutely chilling, playing out without a word and with no score.
The film never really totally gels, at least part of which can be attributed to unwanted hands tinkering with it, but it's
memorable nonetheless, buoyed by some great performances, especially by Palmer, who is both tragic and
steely in equal measure. The supporting cast is full of colorful players as well. Only Cooper seems slightly out of his
element here, but part of that is due to the fact that the character stretches credulity to the breaking point. But the
real lingering question many might
have while watching
Cloak and Dagger will be what Lang might have achieved if his original intentions were left
alone.
