Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

alexanderdavies-99382 "Background to Danger" is a case of everyone involved just going through the motions. Nothing about this film is distinguished and it's a relief that it's only on for 80 minutes. George Raft should have chosen better films than this routine fare. The above film was his fifth and final one before he and "Warner Bros" parted company for good. Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre are both fine actors who gave solid support but even they can't save this nonsense. Brenda Marshall isn't much of an actress. She may have had a good screen presence but Bette Davis or Olivia De Havilland she isn't. The worn plot follows an American travelling salesman (Raft) who just happens to get involved with some espionage conspiracy and is recruited by the American embassy in a part of North Africa to discover what is going on. The script is very dull and holds no surprises whatever. At least there is some action but that can only compensate for so much of the film's drawbacks. A pity that George Raft left the studio on such a sour note.

romanorum1 Quite a few spy thrillers emanated during World War II, as was "Background to Danger," filmed at war's height. The opening narrative gives us the background. It is 1942, and the focus is on neutral Turkey. For the Germans are in Bulgaria and are still pushing eastward. The Russians are in the Caucasus and the British occupy French Syria. The neutrality of Turkey, in the center of the action, keeps the combatants apart. Will Turkey enter the war and tip the balance of power? So Turkey's capital, Ankara, is flooded with spies, agents, and provocateurs. On one street, "the street of 1,001 plots," lie all together the embassies of the US, England, Italy and Germany.At film's beginning an unsuccessful attempt is made on the life of German ambassador Von Papen. The Russians are suspected. But back in Berlin, on the Wilhelmstrasse, Nazi Colonel Robinson (Robinson? = Sydney Greenstreet) is discussing matters with the would-be assassin Rudick, who has just flown six hours directly in from Ankara. Robinson is not happy that Rudick has failed in his mission to kill Von Papen and thus blame the Russians. The Nazis hope that inciting the Turkish people will get them to pressure the government to join the Axis Powers. Why the plot to kill Von Papen? The reason is that German threats, bribes, and assassinations failed to get results. Ah, those nasty Nazis! While Robinson speaks he drags his finger along the wall map, specifically on the Middle East. His finger stops at Aleppo in northern Syria, not far from the Turkish border. Now the camera zooms in to the train station in Aleppo. American machine salesman Joe Barton (George Raft) and mysterious Ana Remzi (Osa Massen) board the train and share the same compartment. The train heads for Ankara where Joe and Ana depart for different hotel locations. Ana had given gum-chewing Joe several thousand lira to hold for her, the last of her family fortune. She said that she was escaping persecution. As an American, Joe cannot be searched. When he opens the envelope after he is alone, Joe finds only maps, which appear to be invasion routes. He hides the documents inside his hotel room. Ana is soon killed in a seedy hotel by a sinister-looking man named Igor Rashenko, who had previously stalked her on the train (although we do not know the exact reason why she was murdered). Meanwhile Colonel Robinson, back from Berlin, and three associates posing as Turkish police arrest Joe and take him to a remote hideaway. In the building cellar Joe gets worked over, but will not reveal the whereabouts of the envelope. By the way, since they are fake maps (as we learn), why does Col. Robinson need them? Can't the Germans just duplicate new ones? (plot hole #1) Suddenly Joe gets rescued by armed Nikolai Zaleshoff (Peter Lorre) and his sister Tamara (Brenda Marshall). How Nikolai unexpectedly pops out of nowhere into the cellar is not explained (plot hole #2). It turns out that Nikolai and Tamara are Russian agents, and even though the Soviet Union is an American ally, Joe does not trust the two. Several events transpire to cement Joe's thoughts, and with so many spies afoot, nobody trusts anybody. But the shadowy Nikolai does tell Joe that Ana Remzi's real name was Baranovich, and was really a German agent. In the meantime bodies begin to pile up. Robinson wants the American "meddler" put out of the way for good. Along the way we have already learned that Joe is really an American spy.The conclusion begins with an exciting car chase. Will the bad guys catch up to Joe and thus prevent him from thwarting the pro-Nazi sympathizing folks who operate the newspaper presses that will print out false and incriminating information against the Russians? It is hard to believe that one man can do so much damage against all the folks in the newspaper building. And even if he succeeds, can't the presses be repaired? And why is everything so time-sensitive in the first place? (plot hole #s 3 and 4). Towards the end the movie hints that the Germans plan on invading Turkey (false, never happened).While the plot holes are many, the performances are uneven. Raft is as stiff as a board; Lorre acts goofy throughout. Nevertheless the production values exceed the plot-line. The atmosphere reeks of wartime danger and Tony Gaudio's cinematography makes us believe that we are in Ankara and Istanbul (Constantinople). The movie is fast-paced and finely edited. That car chase is one of the better ones in the first fifty years of world cinema history. Sydney Greenstreet is always great to watch; the man could certainly act. And I like those Lionel Trains.

ROCKY-19 International intrigue in hot spot Ankara, Turkey, during World War II is the center of this secret agent tail. Nasty Nazi Dr. Robinson (Sydney Greenstreet) plots to use lies in the press to push Turkey to ally itself with Germany against Russia. American Joe Barton (George Raft) is posing as a businessman when he falls into possession of falsified documents the Germans want printed in a sympathizing newspaper. Barton is soon mixed up with the Zaleshoffs (Peter Lorre and Brenda Marshall), a brother and sister claiming to be Russian spies who are after the same documents. Barton has trouble believing anyone, because they all attack him at various times and at least one of them is a cold-blooded killer. The plot had potential, but director Raoul Walsh did not seem to know quite what to do with a story of this nature and there is a complete lack of real emotion in the proceedings. He also seemed to be saddled with a low budget (the miniature train is painfully obvious). His three male stars all but play caricatures of themselves. Raft is all buttoned up and monosyllabic, Greenstreet is almost a cartoon, and Lorre chews the scenery and comes out best. Yet it is still a pretty good movie (if you can withstand being yelled out for the first five minutes and the overcooked musical scoring.) There is a great aura of suspicion over everyone, which leaves you guessing at everyone's connection with everyone else. There is also a great car chase, noir cinematography from Tony Gaudio that caresses Raft's closeups fondly, and some good visual bits that will make you smile.

theowinthrop It hurts to give any film with Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre less than "5" on a scale of "1" to "10", but BACKGROUND TO DANGER (despite their presence) is not a good World War II espionage piece. It may be the weakest movie ever made from an Eric Ambler novel. Between 1938 and 1945 Ambler wrote five spy or international crime novels that (with his contemporary, and master, Graham Greene) reshaped the whole genre. Ambler's books were CAUSE FOR ALARM, BACKGROUND TO DANGER, JOUNRNEY INTO FEAR, THE MASK OF DEMETRIOS, and EPITAPH FOR A SPY. The greatest of these was the last that he wrote - THE MASK OF DEMETRIOS (also called A COFFIN FOR DEMETRIOS) which Greenstreet, Lorre, and Zachary Scott turned into one of the best portraits of a totally amoral criminal in cinema. Orson Welles helped direct (and supported Joseph Cotton in) JOURNEY INTO FEAR. I'm not sure by I believe that EPITAPH FOR A SPY (set in France in 1938) and CAUSE FOR ALARM (dealing with economic rivalries between somewhat allied axis countries) were not made into films. Someone may correct me on that.CAUSE FOR ALARM introduced a Communist Russian agent and his sister to Ambler's readers. Tamara and Nicolai Zarashoff are (when not pursuing espionage for their government in Moscow) bickering all the time. Ambler liked to humanize his characters (such as his masterpiece, Arthur Abdul Simpson, in THE LIGHT OF DAY / "TOPKAPI"), so his villain Demetrios Talat turns out to be a determined social climber, using his talents for evil in THE MASK OF DEMETRIOS to assist a bank, the Eurasian Credit Trust, on which he ends up a director. The Zarashoffs and their unwitting ally in CAUSE FOR ALARM manage to cause a brief split in the interests of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in early 1939. One would have known this when reading BACKGROUND TO DANGER a few years later, when they reappeared.When talking about the film FIVE FINGERS I gave the background of Turkish neutrality in World War II. Ambler tackled this in the novels BACKGROUND TO DANGER and JOUNRNEY INTO FEAR, pointing out that Turkey's police and army were scrupulously looking out to protect that neutrality (Col. Haki, who helps tell the introductory part of the story of Demetrios in THE MASK OF DEMETRIOS - played by Kurt Katch there - reappears as Orson Welles, protecting American engineer Joseph Cotton in JOURNEY INTO FEAR: to make sure Cotton finishes his job in arming Turkish naval craft). In BACKGROUND TO DANGER, Ambler (correctly) shows that German agents were more likely to try to push Turkey into the Axis camp by underhanded means. The villain is the ambiguously named Col. Robinson (Greenstreet, of course) sent to contact those anti-British Turkish nationalists who would join the Germans. The problem is that the novel demonstrated Ambler's tricks with Robinson in a way the film didn't. Robinson is German, and speaks with a German accent (in fact one of the characters says that he could not possibly be English!). Greenstreet had one of the finest English speaking voices in film.The Zolashoffs are here again (in the novel bickering again) but here working with the American played by George Raft. But in the novel, Raft's American is very naive - and they are educating this new ally in the "background to danger" to Turkish neutrality very quickly. This is not the story as W. R. Burnett made it in his screenplay, making Raft's character an American agent (which he wasn't). I can only guess that he did this to make the no nonsense Raft more believable - who could imagine Raft as a chump? It doesn't work - the novel is constructed for the Raft character to gradually realize the dangers of the Nazis and their allies, and the fact that (dubious as it is to us) the Communist agents were a better bet for allies. Instead the story makes Raft's character become a typical World War II propaganda hero - he can handle these Nazis with a blindfold on!There are some nice moments (due to Sidney and Peter). Greenstreet in particular has two nice ones that come to mind: when he notes his favorite set up (a Strauss waltz on a gramophone and a dead body on the floor), and later when his plans have all collapsed, and he is informed he must return to Berlin (his quick look of horror at hearing what will be his death sentence is done very well). But such moments are few and far between. The rest of this film sinks those few moments one recalls with fondness.