"Journey Into Fear" is an intriguing wartime thriller which features a frightened protagonist, a Nazi assassin, exotic locations and a variety of rather eccentric and sometimes threatening characters. The story which is based on Eric Ambler's espionage novel of the same name is quite involved and the action takes place in an environment which is often tense and menacing.
Howard Graham (Joseph Cotten) is an American armaments expert who visits Istanbul with his wife during World War 11 and is met almost immediately by a man called Kopeikin (Everett Sloan) who is his company's local representative. Kopeikin is very pushy and quickly persuades Graham to go with him to a local nightclub where a magician is shot and killed in circumstances which convince Graham that he was the intended target.
The nightclub incident is investigated by Colonel Haki (Orson Welles) who's the Head of the Secret Police. Haki is aware that Graham's expertise is vital to the planned re-armament of the Turkish navy and that if anything happened to him, the project would suffer a very damaging setback. Haki tells Graham that the attempt on his life had been made by an assassin called Peter Banat (Jack Moss) who'd been hired by a Nazi agent and then, for his own safety, promptly arranges for him to travel on a cargo boat to Batumi.
During the journey Graham grows more anxious as he finds himself surrounded by a strange group of passengers which includes Peter Banat and when he tells the ship's captain that he's seen an assassin on board, the disbelieving captain openly ridicules him for being paranoid. At the end of his journey, Graham is ushered into a waiting car by Banat but when the car has to be stopped to change a flat tyre, Graham makes his escape. A frantic chase follows before the story reaches its extremely tense and exciting climax.
Expressionistic lighting and some eccentric camera angles are used to good effect to create the disturbing atmosphere which seems to permeate the whole movie and the impressive opening sequence and a shoot-out which takes place on a hotel ledge are both exceptionally well executed. Norman Foster is credited as being the film's director but over the years there's also been a great deal of speculation concerning the extent to which Orson Welles was involved. What is indisputable, however, is that "Journey Into Fear" certainly has a great many of the characteristics which audiences readily recognise as being Wellsian.
It's well documented that Welles was committed to completing this movie for contractual reasons and no doubt, this fact and the studio's subsequent heavy editing resulted in an end product which has a real throwaway quality about it. There's so much that's so good in "Journey Into Fear" that it inevitably leaves the feeling that, with greater commitment, it could have been even better.
Howard Graham (Joseph Cotten) is an American armaments expert who visits Istanbul with his wife during World War 11 and is met almost immediately by a man called Kopeikin (Everett Sloan) who is his company's local representative. Kopeikin is very pushy and quickly persuades Graham to go with him to a local nightclub where a magician is shot and killed in circumstances which convince Graham that he was the intended target.
The nightclub incident is investigated by Colonel Haki (Orson Welles) who's the Head of the Secret Police. Haki is aware that Graham's expertise is vital to the planned re-armament of the Turkish navy and that if anything happened to him, the project would suffer a very damaging setback. Haki tells Graham that the attempt on his life had been made by an assassin called Peter Banat (Jack Moss) who'd been hired by a Nazi agent and then, for his own safety, promptly arranges for him to travel on a cargo boat to Batumi.
During the journey Graham grows more anxious as he finds himself surrounded by a strange group of passengers which includes Peter Banat and when he tells the ship's captain that he's seen an assassin on board, the disbelieving captain openly ridicules him for being paranoid. At the end of his journey, Graham is ushered into a waiting car by Banat but when the car has to be stopped to change a flat tyre, Graham makes his escape. A frantic chase follows before the story reaches its extremely tense and exciting climax.
Expressionistic lighting and some eccentric camera angles are used to good effect to create the disturbing atmosphere which seems to permeate the whole movie and the impressive opening sequence and a shoot-out which takes place on a hotel ledge are both exceptionally well executed. Norman Foster is credited as being the film's director but over the years there's also been a great deal of speculation concerning the extent to which Orson Welles was involved. What is indisputable, however, is that "Journey Into Fear" certainly has a great many of the characteristics which audiences readily recognise as being Wellsian.
It's well documented that Welles was committed to completing this movie for contractual reasons and no doubt, this fact and the studio's subsequent heavy editing resulted in an end product which has a real throwaway quality about it. There's so much that's so good in "Journey Into Fear" that it inevitably leaves the feeling that, with greater commitment, it could have been even better.