Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Forumrxes Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

cinephage They do nothing but talk, talk, talk. No action at all except for five seconds when Garfield shoots though supposedly drugged the arch villain (no suspense in discovering who it was, you see at first sight that he is really really bad, only Garfield doesn't know). It's a pretty dull and boring propaganda movie and to tell the truth, though I know it will be considered sacrilegious by most, Garfield's expressionist acting doesn't help. It's so outdated that the torments that seize all of a sudden the poor victim of fascism ( Garfield was jailed in fascist Spain but tortured by Nazis who wanted nobody knows what from him), making his face change and show inner terror are almost funny. Wasn't next-door nice guy Garfield really overrated as an actor ?

Larry41OnEbay-2 I've always enjoyed Garfield's work; he's honest, tough and unpredictable. This WWII drama has its own propaganda agenda and dependable Walter Slezak is a creepy Nazi. Audiences of 1943 would find it easy to cheer and boo in the right places, but only for a while. For the mystery to work there has to be some surprises. Lovely and curvaceous Maureen O'Hara is so sweetly sympathetic but also duplicitous, her true motivations are as hard to guess as her stunning appearance is easy to admire.As far as a stand alone film it is a tad dated because it was a product of it's time and agenda. This was not meant to be escapism; it was a message of how dark the opposition was and how they stooped low to break our spirit. But we know in the end the good guys will win and their pride, their spirit and their cause must lose.So in retrospect I give it a soft recommendation unless you can put yourself in the mind-set that was made for a specific audience, the mothers, fathers, wives, girlfriends', and children of those fighting the biggest war in history.

narmer71 Most of Garfield's movies are too old and mired in the great depression to hold up. Although it creaks, this one holds up well as it was released 1943. His portrayal of a tough guy recovering from post traumatic stress is unusual. Is he plagued by auditory hallucinations or does he really hear that fiend dragging his foot outside his door ? Like most film noirs the good guys triumph but they don't find happiness.An interesting characterization by Maureen O'Hara as the mysterious woman who seems to share her love with Garfield. Most female characters weren't this deep or complicated. Her role is a very different from her roles as John Wayne's former wife. In a feminine way she is tougher than Garfield's character.Like any movie made in 1943 the plot is anti fascist. But as someone who fought in the Spanish Civil War, Garfield's character should lean to the left. Yet he is part of a wealthy uptown crowd.If you like John Garfield but find his movies of the depression too distant to appreciate, try this one.

bmacv Hollywood fought World War II on many fronts: most obviously, in its documentaries and war dramas; in genre series coopted for the war effort (such as Sherlock Holmes programmers); and in thrillers dedicated to smoking out the Fifth Column at home (The House on Ninety-Second Street). There was also a more complicated, ideologically tinged kind of movie, not simply anti-Nazi but more broadly `anti-Fascist' (and defiantly leftist). Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine was one; The Fallen Sparrow was another.John Garfield (who else?) survived torture while fighting for the anti-Franco forces in the Spanish Civil War, but it took its toll; he recuperated in a sanitarium in the Southwest. Upon returning to New York – where a war buddy has met death by defenestration from a penthouse party – he finds some of his friends traveling in the same circles as vaguely sinister Europeans and fly-specked aristocrats – Germans, Italians, Spaniards – who take a perverse interest in him. Among them is Maureen O'Hara (in a dark, forties updo), who runs hot and cold when it comes to his advances. The dense plot of The Fallen Sparrow collapses into a noirish muddle. Multiple heavies purr in a babel of as many stage accents (Hugh Beaumont's Prussian the most amusing of them). Walter Slezak plays a mittel-European professor whose passion seems to be the aesthetics of torture, and whose limp summons up nightmares for Garfield. There are also family crests dating from at least the Borgias (whose speciality was goblets of poisoned wine), a senile old curmudgeon who believes he'll be restored to the throne of France, and a tattered standard Garfield has rescued from Spain, which becomes this film's black bird....Following all these threads require rapt attention, but who would be willing to devote anything less to the fight against Fascism? The film borrows from such immediate predecessors in the nascent noir cycle as The Maltese Falcon (especially the ending) and The Glass Key. It cooks up plenty of atmosphere but lacks vital clarity. It's not without interest – the attention to the psychological aftermath of torture is a bold and courageous stroke – but with its political passions looking quaint, if not naive, this overheated melodrama leaves a scorched aftertaste.