Highly Dangerous (1950)

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Blistering performances.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

A Strange Concoction that never seems to find its Place or knows what it wants to be. A Contrast of Genres Unintentionally makes for some Bizarre Entertainment that is an Easy Watch.Never Fully Attaining a Thriller Mode it does have a few Scenes that are Worthy of its Espionage Element. There is a Realistic Forest Fire Diversion, a rather Disturbing Interrogation with Drugging and Hot Lights, and a Murder that Starts Things Going. It also Throws a Twist of Mind Control Side Effects that is a bit Corny but Engaging. Once things get Underway the Tone Shifts Uneasily between Farce and Fanciful Nonsense.The Biological Warfare Premise is Key but Never as Threatening as it should be and Ending it all is a Comedy Routine with Over Talking and is Something out of a Sit-Com. Worth a View for a few Good Things but Ultimately its Downfall Remains its Inconsistent and Wavering Tone.

As my Father, Antony Darnborough produced this film and my uncle Muir Mathieson conducted the music, I might be slightly biased although I still feel that biological warfare was virtually unknown to the general public at the time and therefore this film was useful on many levels.Perhaps it can in some way highlight the efforts made by the hundreds of brave and talented civilians during the cold war, many of course had little or no idea what they were letting themselves in for and no training in interogation techniques.Classic line: "A few moths ago some people were shot in the woods - accidentally. Tourists"James Darnborough

Highly Dangerous is a rare original screenplay by novelist Eric Ambler. It draws heavily on elements of his early pre-1939 thrillers, but reposts them behind the Iron Curtain. This film leans particularly on Ambler's first novel The Dark Frontier, most notably with the super-agent coda, which is very fashionable today.Ambler's problem with Highly Dangerous is that most of the plot devices he invented single-handedly in the 30's were used to the point of saturation by film-makers during the 40's. By the time he got around to an original screenplay it all seems very unoriginal. For that reason I like to think of this film as British cinema's homage to all Ambler's great work in the 30's. An adaptation of one of Ambler's post war novels, say, Judgement On Deltchev, would have been much more satisfactory at this point in his career - as it was, he had to wait ten years until Topkapi before the cinema recognised his post-war novels.Margaret Lockwood makes for a very beautiful and personable innocent, drawn into a cold-war plot about a form of biological warfare, not entirely a new thing, but a change from the nuclear threats of the time. Lockwood's career was on the decline, and this film can't have offered her very much compensation. Additionally, she is badly served by her make-up artist, her hair being mocked up to middle-age very badly.Don't treat this film as a serious attempt to translate Ambler's art to the screen - you can find that in just about any war-time thriller - from Journey Into Fear to The Mask of Dimitrios. Highly Dangerous is minor Ambler, and an opportunity for a fading Lockwood to make one more impression, and what an impression - innocent, scientist and secret agent.

Margaret Lockwood is Frances Gray, a scientist who takes on a government assignment that is "Highly Dangerous" in this 1950 film also starring Dane Clark, Wilfred Hyde-White and Marius Goring. Frances Gray works with bugs, so the government asks her to go to a country of opposing ideology and get a sample of bugs being used by them, possibly for germ warfare. At first, she says no, and then relents and travels to this unnamed country posing as a tour director checking out possible tour locations. Her cover is blown immediately by the chief of police (a heavily disguised Goring) who is on the train with her, and shortly afterward, her contact is killed, and she is arrested, drugged and questioned. The head of the British consulate, tipped off by a newspaper reporter she met previously (Clark) secures her release.The film starts out as a drama, but the mood lightens once she's out of prison. Under the influence of the drug she's been given, she plots a way to get into the lab based not on reality but on the antics of a radio spy on a program her nephew likes. The reporter knows it won't work, but when the first part of it actually does, he goes along.Margaret Lockwood went through several phases during her career - this was her mid period, after the ingénue of "The Lady Vanishes" and before the older woman in "Cast a Dark Shadow." She does a good job and looks very attractive. The stronger role was Clark's - he was being groomed as another John Garfield but never quite got there - he's very good, handling both the dramatic and the comic aspects well. Goring is a far cry from Victoria's husband in "The Red Shoes" -this seems an odd role for him, but he's excellent.An odd film but, if taken for what it is, a good one.