A fiendishly wicked little thriller set during Hitler's rise to power.
Paul Lukas is a German art dealer who's been living in San Francisco. He returns to Nazi Germany and drinks the kool aid, turning on his business partner, who stays in America, and others who are horrified about what they're hearing about their homeland. In a scene that cements how definitively he's thrown in his lot with the Nazi movement, he allows his partner's daughter and son's fiancee to be gunned down on his doorstep when he refuses to hide her from the Gestapo. But his partner, or so he thinks, exacts his revenge when he starts sending him coded messages that bring him under suspicion of the Nazis. And then there's a last-minute twist worthy of a Hitchcock film.
"Address Unknown" is one of those little gems of a movie that you've never heard of and then after you've seen it wonder why. It manages to be both a serious exploration of the horrors of fascist ideology and a tense thriller with noirish overtones. Famed art director William Cameron Menzies directed the film, and while he's not credited with the art direction, you wonder if he had a major hand in it, as it's sensational, as is the off-kilter cinematography. At first I was put off a bit by the look of the film -- things are oddly framed and angles are weird. But as I got more into the film, I decided its look matched its tone and subject matter perfectly. I don't know how many shots there are of people looking small and overwhelmed by the environment around them, or of people visually imprisoned by the walls of corridors and doorways, all of which are visual metaphors for what happens to them as characters.
The art direction was singled out with an Academy Award nomination in the black and white category, back in the days when there were separate awards given for black and white and color films. It's a shame the cinematography couldn't be nominated as well. The film also received a nomination for Best Dramatic or Comedy Score, courtesy of many-times-nominated Morris Stoloff and his partner on this film, Ernst Toch.
Grade: A
Paul Lukas is a German art dealer who's been living in San Francisco. He returns to Nazi Germany and drinks the kool aid, turning on his business partner, who stays in America, and others who are horrified about what they're hearing about their homeland. In a scene that cements how definitively he's thrown in his lot with the Nazi movement, he allows his partner's daughter and son's fiancee to be gunned down on his doorstep when he refuses to hide her from the Gestapo. But his partner, or so he thinks, exacts his revenge when he starts sending him coded messages that bring him under suspicion of the Nazis. And then there's a last-minute twist worthy of a Hitchcock film.
"Address Unknown" is one of those little gems of a movie that you've never heard of and then after you've seen it wonder why. It manages to be both a serious exploration of the horrors of fascist ideology and a tense thriller with noirish overtones. Famed art director William Cameron Menzies directed the film, and while he's not credited with the art direction, you wonder if he had a major hand in it, as it's sensational, as is the off-kilter cinematography. At first I was put off a bit by the look of the film -- things are oddly framed and angles are weird. But as I got more into the film, I decided its look matched its tone and subject matter perfectly. I don't know how many shots there are of people looking small and overwhelmed by the environment around them, or of people visually imprisoned by the walls of corridors and doorways, all of which are visual metaphors for what happens to them as characters.
The art direction was singled out with an Academy Award nomination in the black and white category, back in the days when there were separate awards given for black and white and color films. It's a shame the cinematography couldn't be nominated as well. The film also received a nomination for Best Dramatic or Comedy Score, courtesy of many-times-nominated Morris Stoloff and his partner on this film, Ernst Toch.
Grade: A