I could have sworn we'd seen this before from the title, but then watching it nothing was ringing a bell...until the climax, where there was definite déjà vu. But at any rate, no harm in seeing it twice, because it's a corker. It's essentially a Lady Vanishes companion piece, because it's written by the same writers, features Margaret Lockwood as the heroine (albeit a different one, supposedly Czech, although she wisely never attempts an accent), and again features Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne as the Cricket-loving archetypical Englishmen Charters and Caldicott.
However, taking over from Alfred Hitchcock is Carol Reed, and taking over from Michael Redgrave as the dashing lead is a very young-looking Rex Harrison (whose face looks strangely bottom-heavy - he definitely improved with age), whom I shall now think of as the Evil David Niven (given his well-documented off-screen shittiness, as well as his on-screen arrogant persona). It also features Paul "Casablanca" Henreid as [SPOILER] an apparent good guy who makes a sharp heel turn about 20 minutes in.
Anyway, our film begins in Prague just as the Nazis are "being forced to invade for self-defense". There's actually some impressive special effects of the Luftwaffe flying overhead and dropping leaflets.
The group of middle-aged-to-old men whom we see witness this all make tracks for the airport, one of them ("Bomasch") after calling his daughter (who turns out to be Margaret Lockwood's Anna) to tell her to meet him.
Well, she might've made it if she hadn't gone upstairs to pack and get all dressed up in her best fur coat. As it is, she opens the door to find Nazis on her doorstep, come to arrest her. Off she goes to a concentration camp, where she encounters Karl, a teacher who stands up to the Nazis and gets beaten badly for his mouthiness.
However, one day when they're talking covertly, a Nazi officer comes to punish them and Karl recognizes him as a former pupil whom he advised to pretend to be a Nazi to survive, and Karl begins to hatch an escape plan. And escape they do, on to a ship, and off to England, where they land at a seaside resort by pretending to be bringing in one of the rowboats. Then the task is to find Anna's father. "Fortunately," Karl has a friend who can help the two illegal aliens out - an optician... who turns out to be a Nazi spy!! And guess what? So is Karl! The whole "help Anna escape" scheme is just because her father is an engineer who has produced some amazing armor plating that both the British and the Nazis want to get their mitts on. Anyway, Anna puts an advert in the paper for her father to contact her and gets a mysterious phone call telling her where to pick up a single train ticket that will take her to (another) seaside resort, where she is to ask for "Gus Bennett". Moreover, she is not to tell anyone where she's going. Of course, she runs straight to Karl to tell him, but (amazingly) refrains from giving any details. However, she is, of course, followed (by the evil optician) when she goes and finds that "Gus Bennett" is Rex Harrison as a boardwalk performer whose schtick is singing his own songs and selling the sheet music. Anna stays under "Gus's" (really Dickie Randall) protection,
although chafing rather, and getting quite insulting about his music) while her father, with whom she is reunited, stays across the bay at a military installation. However, "English naval officers" come and knock out Dickie, and escort the unsuspecting Bomasches under cover of night to a U-Boat off the coast where Anna is horrified to see Karl in a Nazi uniform.
Dickie is somewhat crestfallen at his failure but determined to make up for it. If the Nazis can steal the Bomasches, well then he can steal them back! And so begins the real movie, wherein Dickie disguises himself as Major Ulrich Herzog of the Corps of Engineers and infiltrates the building where the Bomsches are being held and persuades several very gullible officials (the funniest of whom, Raymond Huntley, looked very familiar, and turns out not just to have been a fixture on 70s British TV, but also the evil headmaster in the third Hornsleigh film we just watched) that he was Anna's lover a few years ago and can persuade her to persuade her father to cooperate.
After (half) a night in the hotel where they must pretend to be being amorous (and Dickie almost gives himself away by humming one of his tunes that the room service man recognizes as British) their plans to escape are derailed by a demand from the Fuhrer that the Bomasches be brought immediately by train to Munich (hence the title). This is not meant to include "Major Ulrich" but he again persuades all and sundry that it's best if he tag along. It's on the platform that his ruse begins to unravel thanks to an encounter with Caldicott who swears he's the spitting image of his old Cambridge pal Dickie. This sets off Karl's suspicions (helped by the fact that he's been insanely jealous of Ulrich, having obviously been a bit smitten by Anna) and he calls around to see if there really is an Ulrich Herzog. As luck would have it, Charters is on an extension and realizes that, yes it is really Dickie, and that he's be rumbled. Thereafter Charters and Caldicott have to find it in themselves to help out. There follows a tense scene on the train (did Dickie prefer doughnuts or teacakes? turns out to be a question of vital import)
leading up to the climax of cable cars in the mountains at the Swiss border that tickled our déjà vu. Slightly straining credulity is the fact that in the shootout that accompanies this scene, Dickie's small revolver fires between 20 and 30 bullets before it finally runs out.
But at any rate, a first rate little number, full of jabs at the Nazis that are much needed in today's climate. A double bill of this with The Lady Vanishes would be very satisfying. Shame Rex Harrison was such a cad, because he makes a very satisfyingly suave hero, and Margaret Lockwood is a national treasure, even if the nation isn't really Czechoslovakia.
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