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Confidential Agent (1945)
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Overview
User Rating:
Release Date:
10 November 1945 (USA) morePlot:
During the Spanish Civil War, a republican courier travels to England to try and buy coal. He meets with an amount of local hostility... more | add synopsisUser Comments:
Boyer Isn't Spanish and Bacall Isn't British, Yet... moreCast
(Cast overview, first billed only)| Charles Boyer | ... | Luis Denard | |
| Lauren Bacall | ... | Rose Cullen | |
| Victor Francen | ... | Licata | |
| Wanda Hendrix | ... | Else | |
| George Coulouris | ... | Captain Currie | |
| Peter Lorre | ... | Contreras | |
| Katina Paxinou | ... | Mrs. Melandez | |
| John Warburton | ... | Neil Forbes | |
| Holmes Herbert | ... | Lord Benditch | |
| Dan Seymour | ... | Mr. Muckerji | |
| Art Foster | ... | Chauffeur | |
| Miles Mander | ... | Mr. Brigstock | |
| Lawrence Grant | ... | Lord Fetting | |
| Ian Wolfe | ... | Dr. Bellows | |
| George Zucco | ... | Detective Geddes |
Additional Details
Parents Guide:
Add content advisory for parentsRuntime:
118 minCountry:
USALanguage:
EnglishColor:
Black and WhiteAspect Ratio:
1.37 : 1 moreSound Mix:
Mono (RCA Sound System)Filming Locations:
Warner Brothers Burbank Studios - 4000 Warner Boulevard, Burbank, California, USAFun Stuff
Trivia:
This is famously the movie where Howard Hawks said Bacall let her voice get high again, and as a result no-one liked her in it. Curiously enough there is no sign of this in the actual movie. If no-one liked her in it maybe she was just miscast as an Englishwoman. moreQuotes:
Rose Cullen: What you want and what you settle for are not often the same.Luis Denard: And often what you want is no good either.
more
Movie Connections:
Referenced in Hold Your Breath and Cross Your Fingers: The Story of 'Dark Passage' (2003) (V) moreSoundtrack:
Too Marvelous for Words moreFAQ
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I watch a lot of films, good, bad and indifferent; there is usually something of interest to fixate upon, even if it is only set design, or the reliable labor of a good character actor, or the fortuitous laughter that emerges from watching ineptitude captured forever.
However, I was quite pleasantly surprised by this film, one I had never seen before. Graham Greene has been translated into film many times of course, in such masterpieces as "Thin Man" and in lesser vehicles. "Confidential Agent" is one of those lesser vehicles, yet it manages to get me somewhere anyway, despite lackluster direction, the incongruity of Bacall and Boyer's depictions as (respectively) British and Spanish, and the almost complete non-existence of any chemistry between the two leads. In some ways, this last "problem" actually begins to work in the film's favor, for how can love really blossom in the killing atmosphere of fascism and capitalism meeting about one person's tragedy? The most compelling aspect of the film arises directly from Greene's complex and guilt-ridden psychology, which pervades the film. I know some see the deliberate pacing here as dull, and I can understand that. Yet I found that plodding accentuated rather than detracted from what is a claustrophobic world. I was compelled to watch, not by any great acting (although Boyer is marvelous as usual, managing to convey a rich mixture of world-weariness, tragedy, hope, and fervor with his magnificent voice and yearning eyes), but by the down-spiraling rush of one man's slim hopes against a world of oppression and money. What is a thief? What good is love in the face of death? Where does mere profit-taking end and exploitation begin? The film does not rise to the level of art, and thus cannot hope to answer such questions, but it is much more than mere entertainment, and its murders and guilts are very grimly drawn. The lack of glitz, of "bubble," of narrative "bounce" help to make this movie very worthwhile.
And there is no happy ending, for history wrote the ending.