CLOAK AND DAGGER (1946)

A Fritz Lang spy film set in the latter days of WWII. Gary Cooper is a physics professor (at Midwestern University!) who is working on the atom bomb; he is recruited by the OSS to go off to Switzerland to debrief a brilliant Hungarian scientist who has defected to the Allies (Helen Thimig); they need to find out how far along the German atom program is. Soon after he meets her, she is kidnapped by Nazis and, even though Cooper and others chase after her, she is eventually killed. Cooper then heads off to Italy in an attempt to bring back another atomic scientist (Vladimir Sokoloff); he will go willingly only if they can free his daughter, who is being held by the Nazis. Most of Cooper's band of Resistence fighers (including Robert Alda, Alan's real-life father) go off to get the daughter, while Cooper stays with Lilli Palmer and, of course, a romance develops. There is some brutal violence, including a memorable fight between Cooper and the thuggish Marc Lawrence (a scene that seems to have influenced Hitchcock in TORN CURTAIN) and some double crosses involving lovely female Nazi spies. The Cooper/Palmer romance bogs the proceedings down, especially a silly bit with a meowing cat, but generally the movie goes along at a nice clip, and the wrap up in the last 15 minutes is satisfying. James Flavin plays an old friend of Cooper's who visits him from the OSS; Marjorie Hoshelle has a nice bit as a spy. I don't normally notice background music, but the score by Max Steiner is quite good, at least until the last 5 minutes, when it gets bizarrely bombastic. One complaint: there isn't nearly as much spying and sneaking around in the dark as the title leads one to expect. [DVD]