Long before "84 Charring Cross Road", there was "Address Unknown", another film based on letters between its protagonists, but this one is very different. The correspondence is between two business partners, one Jewish and living in San Francisco, the other a German who has returned to Germany during Hitler's rise to power and who has been seduced by Nazi propaganda. The film was made in 1944 and was yet another addition to the anti-Nazi pictures being turned out at the time. It was fundamentally a B-Movie, produced and directed by the great designer William Cameron Menzies and it looks terrific, (Rudolph Mate did the stunning, noirish cinematography; this is one of the greatest black and white films ever shot).
Paul Lukas, fresh from his Oscar success in "Watch on the Rhine", is the Nazi sympathiser and although the film is far from subtle it is very powerful and it has been shamefully underrated and ignored. The last section is like a nightmare out of Kafka but this nightmare is frighteningly real. Perhaps after the War people felt there was no longer any need for films like this and it simply disappeared. I think it's a small masterpiece that demands to be seen, particularly now. Absolutely unmissable if you can track it down.
Paul Lukas, fresh from his Oscar success in "Watch on the Rhine", is the Nazi sympathiser and although the film is far from subtle it is very powerful and it has been shamefully underrated and ignored. The last section is like a nightmare out of Kafka but this nightmare is frighteningly real. Perhaps after the War people felt there was no longer any need for films like this and it simply disappeared. I think it's a small masterpiece that demands to be seen, particularly now. Absolutely unmissable if you can track it down.