By Steven Suskin
Rex plays a Navy officer working undercover as a seaside song-plugger. Margaret's father is a scientist who has fled the Nazis; they arrest the daughter and then let her flee to England, as bait. It all winds up on — well, on the night train to Munich. Not to mention a cable car floating Hitchcockoniously across a mountain gorge.
The third side of the triangle is sympathetically played by Paul von Hernried, a Max Reinhardt actor from Austria who was himself a refugee. He continued on to America, where as Paul Henreid he lit Bette Davis' cigarette in "Now, Voyager" and went on to fight for freedom as Victor Laszlo in "Casablanca." But it is Rex's show, and Margaret Lockwood's — with the taunt suspense goosed by the comedic presence of Charters and Caldicott.
20 Jun 2010
The folks at the Criterion Collection keep on coming up with classy releases of films that we want to see again. Night Train to Munich is not a vintage Hitchcock thriller, but it might as well be. This 1940 film comes with a script by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, screenwriters of Hitch's 1938 classic "The Lady Vanishes." Margaret Lockwood, heroine of that similarly train-bound affair, serves the same role here; Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne actually play identical roles, coming along on the rails as those cricket-fanciers Charters and Caldicott. Carol Reed, of "The Third Man" and "The Fallen Idol" — both of which are already on the Criterion list — is the director, and the suspense is taught. Those of you who have yearned to hear Rex Harrison sing 16 years before My Fair Lady, here's your chance.
THE DVD SHELF: Judy Garland's "A Star Is Born" and the Carol Reed Thriller "Night Train to Munich"
(Steven Suskin is author of the recently released Updated and Expanded Fourth Edition of "Show Tunes" as well as "The Sound of Broadway Music: A Book of Orchestrators and Orchestrations," "Second Act Trouble," and the "Opening Night on Broadway" books. He can be reached at ssuskin@aol.com.)
