Passport to Destiny

The plot has more holes than Swiss cheese, yet the story and Lanchester's character charge continually and inexorably forward. Can't imagine how this got dreamed up, but it makes for a cute fast-paced farcical fantasy. Not a great film or even a good film, yet Lanchester's presentation brings a mix of Charlie Chaplin and Lucille Ball to the loony scrubwoman who believes she is magically protected from all harm, even while everything and everyone is getting blown up all around her. She has a plucky determination and dedication to her cause, and blithely strolls down streets of London while bombs are dropping all around her; makes her way 1,000 miles across Europe with no money, no ID papers and no prearranged confederates to check in with and receive assistance from, in record time; and even barks orders to Nazis while she is being held prisoner by them. Once she sets out on this quest, you can't stop watching to see where it leads her and how she will continue unscathed, even though we all know none of it can succeed. Luckily, as silly as it is, it does not waste a great deal of our time.

Among the supporting players, Gordon Oliver was adequately heroic in demeanor as a German officer who was also a resistance agent with nothing of importance to actually do; Lionel Royce as a high ranking loyal German officer talked an appropriately menacing game, but left the actual violence to his underlings, and Gavin Muir was sufficiently complex as the English public propaganda mouthpiece for the Reich with wavering loyalties. You can definitely find worse ways to spend a little over an hour of your life.

This is surely one of the most extraordinary films to have come out of America during the war. It is also notable for being the only Hollywood movie in which Elsa Lanchester, best known as The Bride of Frankenstein, had the lead part and top billing. She plays a cockney charlady who is convinced she's protected by a "lucky charm" once owned by her late husband (cut to a photo of Charles Laughton) and is resolved to assassinate Hitler. During the London blitz, armed only with her bucket and a mop, she stows away on a ship across the English Channel and proceeds to scrub her way across Occupied Europe by pretending to be deaf and dumb. She lands up in Hitler's HQ in Berlin where language problems are solved by all the 'bad' Germans speaking English with funny guttural accents! Elsa gets a job as a cleaner in Hitler's office but he's out at the time so she delivers a propaganda-like speech to his empty chair. Some 'good' Germans opposed to Hitler (they all speak English with American accents) whisk Elsa back to England in a stolen plane. She is hailed as a heroine only to discover that the "lucky charm" she took with her was part of a job-lot of glass eyes! An absolutely priceless movie, and one which at the end is dedicated to the fighting US forces overseas. One can only wonder what they made of it.

Preposterous but fun film starring Elsa Lanchester as a British cleaning woman whose late husband (a photo of Charles Laughton) was saved from crocodiles by a glass eye he carried.

She believes this eye to have magic powers. She believes it will protect her against all eventualities, so she decides to go to Germany and kill Hitler.

I had a feeling I'd seen this film, and when I heard Lanchester's name in the film, Mrs. Muggins, I knew I had. I named one of my cats Muggins.

Pretending to be deaf and dumb, Mrs. M gets a job at Hitler's headquarters, though he's out of town at the time. She does, however, manage to pass information to an agent about the whereabouts of his girlfriend. What she doesn't realize is that the Nazis have actually let the woman leave prison and have followed her and the agent and know of Mrs. Muggins' involvement.

Though Lanchester was 42 at the time of this film, she doesn't look it and is quite pretty. She gives a lively performance and is very funny, though the humor comes out of the seriousness of her character and her belief in this magic piece. Seeing her order a Nazi to get her coat was too much, as was her rehearsal for murder in Hitler's office.

The rest of the cast is good, and despite the fact that it was done on a set, you really do think you're in London and Berlin somehow.

Short, and Lanchester is always a pleasure.

Googily little wartime fantasy about a cleaning lady who, convinced a lucky charm owned by her late husband (played in two photographs by an uncredited Charles Laughton, Lanchester's real-life husband) will keep her from harm, goes to Berlin to "give that blooming Mr. Hitler what for." Ably supported by a cast of first-rate comics, particularly Lumsdale Hare and Fritz Feld, it still requires Miss Lanchester at her most wide-eyed to pull this one off.

In London, cleaning lady Ella Muggins (Elsa Lanchester) finds her late husband's "magic eye" which she believes kept him safe during his service in India. While carrying it during the blitz, she manages to survive several bombs. She starts to believe in its power and sets off to kill Hitler.

I actually like this silly comedy concept although I don't know if the audience of its day was able to have fun with this movie. It is far from real and that is part of the charm. The only unrealistic aspect I want change is Ella speaking English so recklessly in public. At least, she and the captain get hide in a back alley.