CRACK-UP

US, 1936, 65 minutes, Black-and-white.
Peter Lorre, Brian Donlevy, Helen Wood, Ralph Morgan, Thomas Beck, J.Carroll Niash.
Directed by Malcolm St Clare.

This is Peter Lorre’s first film in the United States. His career began in Germany in 1929, reaching a high mark with his portrayal of the killer in Fritz Lang’s M. He moved from Germany, first to England, appearing in Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much and then moving to the United States where he had a significant 30 years career.

Here he plays, at first, an eccentric hanging around airports, nicknamed The Colonel, Colonel Gimpy because of his limp. He is taken for granted and treated in a humorous fashion. However, he is actually a Baron, a spy for a country near Germany but unnamed, with a whole squad of operatives, aiming to get engineering plans for his country. There are various other spies looking for the plans.

Ralph Morgan plays the designer of planes and there is a great deal of talk at the ceremony commenting on aviation and transportation in the mid-1930s. He is to be present on a flight, a test flight, to Berlin, piloted by a top pilot, Ace Martin, played by Brian Donlevy, accompanied by a young engineer, played by Thomas Beck.

All is definitely not as it seems on the surface. Ace Martin is doing double deals with the engineering plans, manipulating his associate to rely on his fiancee to get into a building to steal the plans. In the meantime, the colonel is using another spy to get the plans – but the spy does a double deal with Ace Martin who, however, shoots him.

In the meantime, the plane designer’s wife has left him, moving to Paris with his partner. He decides to go to Europe on the plane to pursue his wife for reconciliation. Ace Martin is eager to get away from the United States. In the meantime, the fiancee is arrested and interrogated by the government.

The last part of the action is on the plane, the crew unable to contact New York, but able to receive news flashes and, while Ace Martin is on the wing of the plane to replace the gas top, the fiancee reveals everything to the engineer. There are struggles, the plane starts to dive, the Baron, who has smuggled himself aboard, reveals the truth. Actually, at the end, there is a certain camaraderie appealing to human nature, allowing the engineer to be rescued with the plans.

A variation on the espionage atmosphere, internationally, from the American point of view, in the mid-1930s.