Night Boat to Dublin (1946)

[moon_custafer]

Watched this one as part of my ongoing hobby of “watching Robert Newton in movies that are not Treasure Island.” He plays the hero in this one: military-intelligence officer Capt. David Grant who’s searching for a kidnapped scientist and infiltrating a (rather small, from what we see of it) spy ring, and whose first assignment for said spy ring is marrying an Austrian refugee (Muriel Pavlow) who needs British citizenship and a new, less notorious last name.

Newton’s good, but I still wondered why they had cast him, specifically-- until the scene where we realize that his plan was not only to get himself hired by suspect Paul Faber’s law firm, but to almost immediately get caught out as an eminently blackmailable army deserter. Newton can do shame-faced and louche like nobody’s business.

I suspect the title was meant to evoke Night Train to Munich (1940)—the night boat to (and from) Dublin is a setting, but only in the first reel or so. It’s a pretty tight little espionage thriller—maybe too tight: it seemed to me that the script kept bringing up interesting plot details and then just not exploring them. For example, after the scene where our hero’s new wife confides to him about her nazi uncle and spy brother, I kept waiting for there to be at least some tension over whether or not this display of honesty was a double-bluff, but the topic never came up. Then again, Newton’s character hadn’t been planning to tell her about his mission anyway (he hadn’t expected to ever see her again after the registry office) so I suppose her family makes no difference to his plans, except that now he has to stash her in the adjacent room and make her breakfast the next day. Well, he doesn’t have to make her breakfast, but he does, even if he burns the toast and the coffee is hard to distinguish from tea. After all, she patched up the bullet-graze on his arm the night before.

I sort of like that the movie doesn’t overtly pair them up; they clearly fall into a comfortable domesticity almost immediately, but they never kiss and maybe some time after the closing scene they’ll consider giving this marriage thing a whirl or maybe they’ll divorce amicably, and either way he may or may not have to tell her he was there for her brother’s execution by firing squad, but right now they’ve got bigger things to worry about.

As the spy Faber, Raymond Lovell has one of the oddest accents I’ve heard in a movie—it sounds like he’s going for British with a German accent that keeps threatening to slip out but usually manages to stay disguised as trouble pronouncing the letter “r.” According to the internet the actor was originally from Montreal, so this has to have been a deliberate choice, but everybody else acts like they don't notice. Guy Middleton is in this movie mainly to supply banter. Herbert Lom is there to pull a gun. Valentine Dyall is supposed to be somewhere in the cast, but I didn't spot him. Brenda Bruce makes the most of her one scene, as a minion (Leslie Dwyer)’s wife who really wants a fur coat.

Comments

[sovay]

not only to get himself hired by suspect Paul Faber’s law firm, but to almost immediately get caught out as an eminently blackmailable army deserter. Newton can do shame-faced and louche like nobody’s business.

+1.

spatch and I watched this movie in January, after seeing it cross our radar for years. It dropped a lot of threads that we thought were going to be part of the plot, but Newton was delightful. I have no idea what's up with Raymond Lovell's accent because I just realized I've never seen him to know him in a role where he wasn't playing some kind of Continental.

(Did I already commend The Desert Rats (1953) to your attention? Did the wider internet? The plot is full of weird hiccups including the ostensible history in Rommel-era North Africa, but I really love Newton's performance as a man who is ninety-eight percent hopeless trash fire and very aware of it, but the remaining two percent have their head screwed on straighter than anyone else in the plot including the hero, which becomes relevant.)

[moon_custafer]

Newton was delightful.
I described him a few months back after watching a clip as "a dashing Muppet with an RP accent," and seeing the rest of the movie didn't change that assessment.

Did I already commend The Desert Rats (1953) to your attention? You did, and I've been meaning to watch it.

I'm also about half-way through Obsession AKA The Hidden Room (1949), which I'm positive you reviewed years ago, but I can't find it. Newton has crackling, toxic chemistry with Sally Gray and with Phil Brown, but the latter two don't have much with each other IMO. The opening act left me feeling it would all make more sense if Dr. and Mrs. Riordan shared a kink where she brings home young men just so he can walk in and the two of them start the cat-and-mouse verbal sparring and waving about of pistols that may or may not be loaded while the increasingly-nervous third wheel stands around watching.

[sovay]

I described him a few months back after watching a clip as "a dashing Muppet with an RP accent," and seeing the rest of the movie didn't change that assessment.

It is an excellent description.

I'm also about half-way through Obsession AKA The Hidden Room (1949), which I'm positive you reviewed years ago, but I can't find it.

In 2011! [edit: obviously, the genre I didn't know to assign it at the time was film noir.] Your kink theory makes more sense of the opening scene than the film itself bothers to. I do have Newton filed under people who could have chemistry with a cinderblock if they felt like it.

[moon_custafer]

Thanks for the link!

Your kink theory makes more sense of the opening scene than the film itself bothers to.

I appreciate your description in 2011 of Bill’s expression as that scene progresses: “like someone who came expecting Noël Coward and got Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf”

[sovay]

I appreciate your description in 2011 of Bill’s expression as that scene progresses: “like someone who came expecting Noël Coward and got Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf”

Thank you!

[moon_custafer]

people who could have chemistry with a cinderblock if they felt like it

That reminds me that I need to keep an eye on the career of Aiden Gallagher, who in S1 of Umbrella Academy demonstrated chemistry with the top half of a store mannequin, and he was only in his mid-teens at the time.

[sovay]

Aiden Gallagher, who in S1 of Umbrella Academy demonstrated chemistry with the top half of a store mannequin, and he was only in his mid-teens at the time.

Definitely worth keeping an eye on. I'm impressed without even seeing evidence.

[moon_custafer]

There's a scene in the S1 final episode where Five (Gallagher) returns Dolores (the mannequin) to the store, and it's like the ending of Brief Encounter, except the actors are a kid and a mannequin. And they knock it out of the park.

I went and looked up some interviews with Gallagher, and he mentioned that he thought up imaginary dialogue for Dolores so that as Five, he could react to what he hears her saying. I should also note that his character is canonically fifty-nine, but due to some time-travel issues he's stuck in the body of his thirteen-year-old self, and Gallagher conveys that rather well too.