Background to Danger (1943)

As the movie explains near the beginning, Turkey was neutral in World War II - after having been a German ally in World War I, which lead to the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. This movie therefore served, among other things, as a message to those neutral Turks that the Germans were untrustworthy.But it also makes a lot of the Turks look bad, scheming and untrustworthy.And, once George Raft gets involved, a lot of innocent Turks get wasted in the gunplay between Raft and the various German henchmen.Despite the good cast and director, there really isn't much to like here. The Turks, if they can be drawn into war over a newspaper article, don't look very bright. The Russians, represented by Peter Lorre, look like alcoholics. (Brenda Marshall isn't any more convincing here than as a French resistance fighter in Paris After Dark, released that same year.) There isn't much excitement until the very end, and even then, I didn't find it very interesting.I can't imagine OWI approving this for distribution to Turkey or the rest of non-occupied Europe.

Actor George Raft famously blew his chance to play "Rick" in CASABLANCA, opting for BACKGROUND TO DANGER instead. Raft is no Humphrey Bogart, and Brenda Marshall cannot hold a candle to Ingrid Bergman. Though Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre are on hand to lend DANGER a few CASABLANCA touches, DANGER is far too wordy, and few--if any--of the words are memorable (with the exception of "Ana" reciting the first paragraph of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address). If you consider the script for CASABLANCA to be "a Lincoln," then the writer of DANGER churned out a James Buchanan or an Andrew Johnson (two "Corvair" presidents). It's hard to know for sure whom to impeach for DANGER's thin broth: Mr. Raft, screenwriter W.R. Burnett, director Raoul Walsh, or all of the above. The plot of DANGER is overwrought (if not ahead of its time); it would be more suitable for a James Bond flick set in the 1960s. No one wants to be entertained by SUBTLE Nazis--they MUST be callously brutal (as in SCHINDLER'S LIST) or paranoid (see MARATHON MAN).

Nicely paced WW2 spy thriller with George Raft playing an American agent trying to stop a German plan to turn Turkey against Russia. It's an ill-fitting role for Raft but I can't say he was terrible. I always liked him, even if he could be a pretty wooden actor sometimes. This is the kind of role I could easily see Bogart playing, which is ironic considering George Raft notoriously turned down some of the parts that made Bogart's career, such as Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. This movie also marked the end of Raft's contract with Warner Bros, which effectively meant the beginning of the end of his days as an A-lister.The fairly short runtime helps, as does the great supporting cast. Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet are always worth watching. Lovely Brenda Marshall and Ona Massen are good, too. Perhaps I'm in the minority, but I thought this was a very enjoyable movie of its type. I'm sure if you dislike Raft you will find it tougher going than I did. If you're a fan of the cast or WW2 movies in general, I definitely recommend you try this one out.

The Nazis have forged some plans that are supposed to show that Russia wants to invade Turkey. Those plans are chased the whole movie through. Why these plans are so special and cannot be forged all over again or duplicated or whatever - that is never explained and the Nazis that did the plans in the first place are just as much in with the chase as everybody else! And then the Nazis have friendly newspapers in Turkey who are in on the deal with the faked plans and who could just as easily have received the plans by mail from Germany - dozens of them, in case one or two of them got lost in the mail but that would have been to easy, I guess.Well, maybe there were explanations for all this shenanigans in the book from which the story was taken but there sure wasn't any explanations in the picture and so I stopped being baffled at the stupidity of the story and instead watched whatever I could still cherish from this production and found some items. Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstedt deliver as good as ever. Raft is no Bogey but he isn't James Garner either and so he is quite bearable. The photography, lightning etc couldn't be much better and so it struck me.Had I seen this film on a matinée in my childhood days, I would probably have enjoyed it, since I would not have understood the plot but could still appreciate the action and the atmosphere. Maybe that's the way that most people see films? Sure enough, they seem to learn very little from films like The Bicycle Thief or One Flew Over the Cucko's Nest or The Third Man or Citizen Kane and, for sure, they seem unable to distinguish between bogus Abbas Kiarostami and Vittorio de Sica, for instance. That's why we have so many bulls-t artists in the film industry! As long as the production values that meet the eye are OK, nobody seems to bother about what reaches the ears.Still, personally, I don't seem able to get too much from Lorre and Greenstedt, so, in spite of being upset about the ridiculous story, I still enjoyed myself seeing this film.