The names Fritz Lang and Bert Brecht (yes, he's called Bert, not Bertold, in the on screen credits) can go a long way to giving credit in a movie, but I think reviewers here are over-praising this film. First, I'd criticize the script as being overplotted, with too many tangles and endless complications, like a Baroque church with too many ornaments. Some of the dialogue has to be criticized, too. I know it was written during the war and served as a propaganda tool, but here we judge films as entertainment, maybe even art. At several points the movie stalls while a character speechifies, sounding oh-so-noble but at the same time oh-so-unnatural. People may act nobly in real life, but they seldom accompany their actions with little speeches aimed at some distant audience, beautiful cooked-up phrases for the ages. It's jarring, understandable perhaps because of the war, but it adds a false note to the realism of the film. Second, at one moment I was quite shocked at the directing. Fairly early in the story Natasha angrily accuses the assassin of cowardice for hiding while the hostages rounded up by the Nazis are paying the price with their lives. The way she leans forward over his desk, extending her arm to full length from the shoulder and jabbing it at him, not once but twice, looks completely unnatural. That's not the way a real person points an accusatory finger. It's obvious that the actress has had bad direction to move and pose in such a false manner.
Yes, this film is interesting to some extent, perhaps as a period piece. The plot complications, while over-done, at least create the air of something adult and intelligent. The outdoor scenes are all done on a stage set, so it doesn't have the benefit of complete authenticity.
I enjoyed seeing Walter Brennan playing an elderly professor with some brains, having had quite enough of his typecasting as a lovable but cantankerous old codger with that high-pitched, whiny voice of his.
