GrimPrecise I'll tell you why so serious

Konterr Brilliant and touching

Gutsycurene Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Matylda Swan It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

Michael O'Keefe Alan Ladd stars as Captain Webster Carey, who returns to a small village in Italy after WWII. Carey wants to find out who betrayed his O.S.S. team trying to knock out a German-held railroad system. Many villagers of Orta, near Milan, lost their lives during the mission. Upon his return, he is surprised to find out his old love Giulia(Wanda Hendrix)did not die at the hands of the Nazis. To be exact, she is married to a powerful Italian nobleman(Francis Lederer). Carey finds the villagers he thought he was saving from the Germans now hold him responsible for their poverty. Nonetheless, the search for a traitor persists with the aid of Giulia.Kudos to director Mitchell Leisen and Hugo Friedhofer for the music. The theme song "Mona Lisa" won an Academy Award.Also featured in the cast: Joseph Calleia, Richard Avonde, Celia Lovsky, Roland Winters, Frank Puglia and Russ Tamblyn

mikeolliffe 'Captain' Carey - a movie about how Carey got into the service, his exploits there, his comrades-in-arms??? No, you don't really see Carey in the army at all, and only briefly in the O.S.S at the beginning of the movie - where he's on the same set he's on for the rest of this disaster.Other reviewers have spoken favorably of the set and the 'scenery'! Time to get new glasses, guys. It is possible to shoot on an indoor stage and give the impression you're out-doors - but not here. The terrible lighting gives the game away.Do people who write these reviews actually see the films? The townspeople were NOT upset at Carey because of their financial situation, but because their relatives had been executed by the Nazis as reprisals.There's nothing wrong with betrayal as a theme, but the film-makers made a hash of this one.

bkoganbing Most Likely if the song Mona Lisa had not been introduced in Captain Carey, USA, the film would have been listed as another of Alan Ladd's routine action/adventure films with a noir twist. However with Nat King Cole's mega-hit blaring from every other radio station and jukebox of the day the film's immortality is guaranteed.This film's is Ladd's second excursion in the OSS as he played the lead role in an earlier film OSS. He is an OSS operative in northern Italy operating in the basement of a castle with the connivance of the daughter of the countess who owns the place. Ladd and the daughter Wanda Hendrix get a little wartime romance going between acts of sabotage. However someone betrays them and Ladd is wounded and was not summarily executed by the Nazis because in fact he is in uniform and strictly speaking not a spy. The same could not be said for 27 villagers who were killed for partisan activity. Ladd is freed by the allied advance and spends months recuperating.Flash forward five years and he sees a painting that was stored in that basement hideout in an art gallery in New York. That renews his interest in finding out who sold him out. Back in the scene of his wartime exploits he finds Hendrix quite alive, not like he thought and married to Francis Lederer and still living at home with the regal and imperious lady of the manor, Celia Lovsky. Trying to ferret out information Ladd isn't exactly welcomed back by the townspeople as they remember those people shot in reprisal, but of course he stays the course and gets to the truth.Not exactly an original plot and if you can't figure out who the betrayer is 20 minutes into the film you aren't a film buff. The film was directed by Mitchell Leisen who wasn't exactly at his best in the action/adventure tinged with noir adventure. But Leisen was a set designer before being a director and he does do a nice job in recreating Northern Italy without the benefit of on site location shooting.And of course there is the song Mona Lisa which is sung in Italian as the 'cool it the Nazis are around' signal for Ladd. It got an Academy Award for Best Song in 1950 the first ever given to a non-musical film. Besides Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby sang it a lot on his radio program because it was a Paramount film and Bing always tried to use his studio's material when he could. Later on he did a tribute album for Decca records of his contemporary singing rivals and Mona Lisa was on that album for Nat King Cole.Ladd and Wanda Hendrix didn't set the world on fire as a screen team. I have a feeling Ladd didn't want to get too close to her. At the time Wanda was married to Audie Murphy and in Tony Curtis's memoirs he relates that Murphy was a very jealous man with a hair trigger temper and lots of weaponry around. Which is why he went out of his way to be circumspect when they worked together. In fact only once in Ladd's whole career were there affair rumors about him and a leading lady and no it wasn't Veronica Lake.Captain Carey, USA is your basic routine action/adventure film that just happened to have an Oscar winning song in it.

MartinHafer This is not one of Alan Ladd's best films, though it is enjoyable and worth seeing. What makes it more so is the nice Italian locale as well as the music (which, incidentally, won the Oscar)."Captain Carey, USA" begins with a flashback to WWII. Ladd is an OSS agent sent behind enemy lines to gather information in fascist Italy. He and his friends are captured by the Nazis and apparently he's the only survivor--though he was injured and spent years in the rehabilitation. Someone must have betrayed them and when he sees a painting in a gallery that came from the home from which he was hiding during the war, he decides to return. His arrival is a surprise--partly because the people in this small town were so nasty and unwelcoming and mostly because his old girlfriend (who he thought dead) was alive and married! Ladd wants to return home as a result of all this, but a series of murders that seem linked to the betrayal convince him to stay and find out who is responsible.The film has a few nice twists here and there and Ladd is his usual macho self. And, like most of Ladd's other films, it is filled with the shortest actors Paramount could muster--due to Ladd's diminutive size they needed to make this less apparent by pairing him with small actors! Enjoyable but far from his best.