Nazi Agent

I mentioned the other day that I had multiple movies on my DVR that were coming up on TCM that I hadn't watched yet and would like to do posts on them. Two of them show up back-to-back tomorrow on TCM. The second, Desperate Journey at 9:15 AM, is one that last I checked is available on DVD, so I'm going to mention the other one that doesn't seem to be: Nazi Agent, at 7:45 AM. So that's the one I made a point of watching to do a post on.

Conrad Veidt plays Otto Becker, a seller of old books and stamps in New York City in the time just before the US wound up in World War II, helped out by assistant Miss Harper (Dorothy Tree). (The movie started production before December 7, 1941 but didn't finish until just after, and was released in January 1942.) Coming into the business one day is the new consul from Nazi Germany, Baron von Detner (also played by Conrad Veidt). The baron being a Nazi, of course he's pure evil, but more than that, he's also Otto's brother. Otto fled Nazi Germany, and now his own brother is here to tell him, no, you're going to work for the Nazis. Otto protests, but it turns out that he didn't quite have all his papers in order to enter the US, and the baron is going to use that to blackmail Otto. Not only that, but Miss Harper is a Nazi agent who will keep Otto in line.

Otto comes up with a reasonable enough plan, which involves enlisting the help of one of his customers who, he knows, shares Otto's dislike of the Nazis. But since we're fairly early in the movie, we know this is going to be a futile gesture and that the Nazis are more than one step ahead of Otto. Otto gives the customer a letter to take to the police, but the Nazis engineer a traffic "accident" before the man can get to the police.

The baron shows up to put some more pressure on Otto, this time bringing a gun to force Otto to do the baron's bidding. But there's a struggle between the two, and it's Otto who winds up shooting the baron. Since both characters are played by the same actor, Otto comes up with the sort of idea that only works in the movies: he's going to cut off his beard and slick his hair back, and pretend that he's the baron and that it was Otto who was killed. Never mind that there are all sorts of things Otto can't possibly know, such as the combination to the safe at the consulate, he's going to try to get away with it!

Amazingly, Otto is able to get away with it, with one key exception. That is Fritz (Frank Reicher), the family's old butler, who stayed with the family with Otto fled for America but has held anti-Nazi tendencies himself. So he's going to keep Otto's secret safe. Inside the consulate, there's all sorts of espionage going on, climaxing in an attempt to bomb a ship as it goes through the Panama Canal. Otto would like to stop it, but he has to deal with a devoted Nazi, Kurt Richten (Martin Kosleck), and a female agent who might not want to work with the Nazis, Kaaren De Relle (Ann Ayars).

Nazi Agent features a good acting job by Conrad Veidt, which is unsurprising. It also features a highly implausible plot, and an ending that I didn't think made much sense, and those definitely take the movie down a couple of notches. Then again, Nazi Agent wasn't conceived as a particularly big movie, but obviously second on the bill behind one of MGM's prestige movies that would have come out at the beginning of the year, and by the time the movie came out, audiences would have wanted movies showing good Americans defeating the evil Nazis, and Nazi Agent certainly does that.