moon_custafer | Invisible Agent, Take Two

After finally digging up my post with my initial reaction to The Invisible Agent (1942), we watched it again a couple of nights ago and I think it worked better, or at least a little differently. I was aware that Frank would be a terrible spy, but I could see this time that he’s mostly like that when Maria’s in the room; when he’s not focussing on showing off for her, he’s reasonably clever. And the cast is good — Peter Lorre elevates everything he’s in, of course, but Joseph Bromberg is definitely bringing his A game as a nazi official who’s buffoonish right up until he’s scary and also pathetic — Griffin’s speech to him in a prison cell isn’t quite Leslie Howard at the end of Pimpernel Smith (1941), but what is? And Albert Bassermann is very believable as the woodworker/resistance member; I’m not sure, that when it came to his fate, that Siodmak wasn’t thinking of Tilman Riemenschneider