A Lady without Passport ** (1950, Hedy Lamarr, John Hodiak, James Craig, George Macready) – Classic Movie Review 8041

Director Joseph H Lewis’s 1950 MGM black and white thriller A Lady without Passport stars Hedy Lamarr is a heady brew, mixing romantic adventure, film noir and crime drama. It promises quite a bit and has its moments, but mostly fails to deliver.

Cuba is being used as a jumping off point for illegal entry by foreign nationals into the United States. Hedy Lamarr stars as foreign lady without a passport Marianne Lorress, a Viennese concentration camp refugee working in a nightclub, who is caught up in the plan of American secret Immigration Service Agent Peter Karczag (John Hodiak) to uncover a gang who are smuggling illegal immigrants into America. But romance between Marianne and Peter soon complicates and then finally resolves things.

Marianne (Lamarr) wants to forget intrigue in Havana, and, since there are so few thrills, so might the viewer. However, the highly esteemed cult name Lewis brings some flair, imagination and urgency to the direction – considerably more than Howard Dimsdale’s script or the performers deserve here.

Perhaps never the best of actors, Lamarr and Hodiak are not too bad individually, but they lack the chemistry to kick off many sparks. George Macready (Ballin Mundson in Gilda) is excellent as the creepy Palinov, the man running the people smuggling ring. It helps that Paul C Vogel’s noir-style black and white is atmospheric and David Raksin’s score is another asset.

Also in the cast are James Craig, Steven Geray, Bruce Cowling, Nedrick Young, Steven Hill, Robert Osterloh, Charles Wagenheim, Renzo Cesana, Esther Zeitlin, Carlo Tricoli, Marta Mitrovich and Trevor Bardette.

The intelligent Lamarr can hardly have enjoyed her demeaning billing as ‘That Delilah Girl’ after her hit in the 1949 Samson and Delilah.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8041

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