There has always been an audience for this type of picture: the exotic adventure filled with intrigue, shadowy motives, duplicity and questionable identities. The best of such films will also be somewhat credible; the lesser ones, such as this, will bear little relation to realistic characters or believable happenings (despite the claim that this was based on a true story).
STAMBOUL QUEST is a cinematic comic strip in which everything is subordinate to the plot. Unfortunately, that plot sorely lacks suspenseful or adventurous elements, so that even with its reliance on double and triple cross, invisible ink, temporary insanity and a backdrop of references to Mata Hari, there is little to provoke the viewer's interest.
Despite an exalted Hollywood reputation, screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz characteristically loads his films with uncinematic (and often lengthy) scenes of two characters in a room, talking...and talking. When the dialog is less than stimulating, as is the case here, the scenes are flat and the picture drags. Mankiewicz's approach is much better suited to the stage.
Myrna Loy does nicely with a part that requires her to keep her more intense emotions in check. But George Brent fails as an extroverted, happy-go-lucky American set in contrast to the formal, tradition-bound Old World characters who surround him; his high-spirited cavorting may be worthy of an adolescent, but would surely not generate feelings of love in Myrna Loy's worldly, self-possessed counterspy.
The main supporting roles are handled commendably by Lionel Atwill and C. Henry Gordon, both appearing in parts they have played on more than a few other occasions: the stiff, mannered European, and the wily, scheming Middle Easterner respectively.
There is not much to recommend this picture. It has been all-but-forgotten, and deservedly so.
STAMBOUL QUEST is a cinematic comic strip in which everything is subordinate to the plot. Unfortunately, that plot sorely lacks suspenseful or adventurous elements, so that even with its reliance on double and triple cross, invisible ink, temporary insanity and a backdrop of references to Mata Hari, there is little to provoke the viewer's interest.
Despite an exalted Hollywood reputation, screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz characteristically loads his films with uncinematic (and often lengthy) scenes of two characters in a room, talking...and talking. When the dialog is less than stimulating, as is the case here, the scenes are flat and the picture drags. Mankiewicz's approach is much better suited to the stage.
Myrna Loy does nicely with a part that requires her to keep her more intense emotions in check. But George Brent fails as an extroverted, happy-go-lucky American set in contrast to the formal, tradition-bound Old World characters who surround him; his high-spirited cavorting may be worthy of an adolescent, but would surely not generate feelings of love in Myrna Loy's worldly, self-possessed counterspy.
The main supporting roles are handled commendably by Lionel Atwill and C. Henry Gordon, both appearing in parts they have played on more than a few other occasions: the stiff, mannered European, and the wily, scheming Middle Easterner respectively.
There is not much to recommend this picture. It has been all-but-forgotten, and deservedly so.