Yellow Canary

Love a good spy picture, especially those involving double agents and counter spies, and this is one of them. Richard Greene is at his most appealing as a pesty passenger/spy and Anna Neagle is a Nazi sympathizer/ counter spy who meets a Polish national onboard a ship to Halifax who is actually a Nazi operative. Great stuff when you put it all together and add a sinister Nazi espionage plan (is there any other kind of Nazi plan?).

Richard Greene is essential to the main plot, and don't go to the fridge during the passage to Halifax or you will miss a clever bit of deception involving Greene's character, as well as scenes with Margaret Rutherford, who is as delightful as always. "Yellow Canary" is well worth spending the 85 minutes running time. It is entertaining and contains the necessary moments of suspense and excitement that make movie-going so worthwhile.

Readily admitting that I know nothing about Director Herbert Wilcox, I am grateful to IMDB for affording the important - and extremely interesting - piece of information that he was married to the film's female lead, the elegant Anna Neagle, who is also filmed to her advantage as befits a director in love with his star.

Other curiosities are that the excellent support cast includes the great Margaret Rutherford as the nonstop chatterbox, Richard Greene who would become British TV's Robin Hood a decade or more later, the ever slithering Albert Lieven flashing a swastika-bearing cigarette case, and actor Miles Malleson (better known as as the dithering, poetic executioner in KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS) this time out of camera as script writer.

The script certainly is not short on innuendo and clever turns as Neagle receives a stuffed yellow canary in the mail that is her intro to a highly restrictive Nazi cell in Halifax, Canada, to where she travels by ship under the guard of Greene.

Wonderful to see Canadian-British cooperation to down the Nazi cell, pity that Canadian landscapes do not feature more.

Needless to say, you need to suspend your disbelief here and there but YELLOW CANARY is great fun to watch if you are not one of those viewers who expect directors, screenwriters and cameramen in 1943 to be aware of CGI, cinema industry changes and all the rest of it that causes some current viewers to brand movies like this one as "dated."

I enjoyed it thoroughly and hope to have the opportunity to rewatch it in the not too distant future. 7/10.

During the war, the Ministry of Information subsided the film industry resulting in a lot of mindless flag-waving carbon copy movies. Not this though! Intelligent, intriguing, suspenseful and extremely well made describes this one.

Some have called this the thinking person's wartime spy film but that makes this sound much drier than this actually is. This is not a dry, cerebral espionage story - this has real, likeable people who make you care about them and drag you into the story. It's even got Margaret Rutherford and Claude Bailey providing exactly the right amount of comedy..... which is a difficult thing to achieve. Most comedic inserts in films of this era are either cringingly unfunny or so out of context that they just annoy you. Herbert Wilcox however gets this spot on.

Although Mr Wilcox had been making pictures for years (indeed, he almost single-handedly started up the British film industry), I've never considered him outstanding. This however is outstanding: superb writing, superb cinematography, superb acting and incredible atmosphere.

Although the soon to be Mrs Wilcox, Anna Neagle had also been making pictures for years, I've never understood what it was about her that made her so popular. Maybe, as is clearly demonstrated in this, it was because she was a brilliant actress. You'll be impressed. Richard Greene is also a surprisingly excellent personable leading man. Lastly, who remembers that old poet Cyril Fletcher reading his silly "odd odes" on That's Life in the seventies? Well here he is as a young man, doing the same, sans chaise!

If you like wartime espionage films - this is for you. (The Ian Fleming in this however isn't that Ian Fleming.)

Anna Neagle ("Sally") is quite efficient as the supposed Nazi sympathiser who abandons her family in a frequently bombed London and heads to the safety of Nova Scotia. En route, she attracts the attention of both the suave Polish officer "Jan Orlock" (Albert Lieven) and of the apparently hapless British one - Richard Greene ("Garrick") on the boat. On arrival, she befriends the mother of "Orlock" (Lucie Mannheim) and our story of espionage and counter-espionage begins in earnest. Nobody is exactly - or even remotely - whom they say they are and Herbert Wilcox manages to keep us guessing for much of the film, helped by three decent lead performances and quite a good story. Margaret Rutherford has some fun, in her very typical fashion to add a bit of light comedy (and sheer bloody mindedness) to the mix too and all told, this is a gently engaging tale of courage and bravery that is just about plausible.

British, made in 1943, which tells you the ideological basis of the film.

It's a well-worked story of deception and counter-deception, mostly set in Halifax, NS. Evil Nazi agents and heroic British agents, with Richard Greene looking handsomer than ever in the van, mount operations against each other. Anna Neagle plays a double agent, which means she has to act acting, a test of ability which she carries off very well.

Margaret Rutherford has a stormer of a cameo role, shamelessly stealing every scene she's in. Her line "Wouldn't it be nice to do something violent?" is a classic.

Well above average example of routine genre.