Confidential Agent

Capable enough thriller, enlivened by the presence of Charles Boyer and Lauren Bacall, though admittedly, and unfortunately, they don’t work as a couple at all. Nor does Boyer (Hollywood’s go-to guy for a generic [short] dark & handsome European?) pass for Spanish, nor Bacall for British. Nor is the plot very sensible, about a Republican soldier trying to buy up all the world’s coal so the Nationalists can’t get their hands on it, full of weird asides about a new world language (Entrenaciono!) and mass observers… It’s Graham Greene, and I don’t know how far this strays from his novel, but apparently this is one of the adaptations he was most pleased with, so… Hints are there of what I expect were larger themes of guilt and responsibility on the page: Boyer’s agent has been changed irreparably by war, and others’ loyalties are easily bought and sold, but this doesn’t get the attention it deserves in translation. Well, all that aside, it manages to be a pretty exciting and moody picture, Boyer wonderfully grim as the double-crossed agent and Bacall world-wise and smart-assed beyond her twenty years — apparently she was torn to pieces by contemporary reviewers, but I’d say she’s as good as ever here. A shame the romance angle doesn’t work better, as much a fault of its throwaway treatment in the script as any lack of chemistry between them. Recommended for genre fans.