Felix Aylmer is Isaac Emmanuel, an elderly Jewish British subject who goes to Germany to find what happened to the mother of refugee Peter Mullins. He is seized by the authorities, imprisoned, and accused of being part of an international murder ring. He is saved when Greta Gynt, an entertainer he had befriended as a child, who is now the mistress of a high-ranking Nazi, pressures her lover into having him released.
This was Aylmer's only starring role out of almost 140 movie appearances. Like Rob, I wanted to like it, but found its strident naivete off-putting. Director Harold French and his distinguished cast try hard, but the time had well passed for such clarion calls about Nazi anti-semitism.
Louis Golding, who co-wrote the screenplay, was definitely ahead of his time when he wrote the novel it was based on. That was in 1938, and Krystalnacht took place in November of that year. Yet Jews worldwide were well aware of what was going on in Germany. Carl Laemmle had been getting Jews out of Germany since 1934. In 1944, the idea that Mr. Emmanuel was unaware of this when he went into Germany is impossible.
Aylmer's performance is wonderful, as are the other actors. But in 1944, insistence that the Nazi regime was evil was preaching to a choir that included not only Jews, but Gentiles in Britain and the Empire.
