User Reviews

This is one of the best roles of James Mason's career, and it's a long, distinguished one indeed, with more than its share of underrated masterpieces (Michael Powell's "Age of Consent") and overrated mediocrities (Carol Reed's "Odd Man Out) for film fans to dig through. This role is perfect for Mason because no one is better than he at playing elegant scoundrels that you can't help but admire for their craftiness. You root for this spy to double cross everybody all the way even though it might mean the allies losing WWII, etc. And the ending is wonderfully ambiguous and evily hilarious with Mason laughing his head off and not caring that he's personally in a very tight spot but thoroughly amused that the "Contessa" who tried to double-cross him had 'gotten hers.' One of the best written and acted American films of the '50s.

A really interesting spy drama, set in Turkey during WW2. James Mason takes the lead role and does a wonderful job painting a picture of a murky, amoral but romantic figure trying to win out in a complex and desperate situation. The supporting cast barely get a look in, as he inevitably dominates all of his scenes. The rest is slowly-paced and mildly complicated, playing out as a chess game between the allied and axis powers, hugely realistic - it's a true story after all - and after a time, quite compelling.

SPOILER WARNING SPOILER WARNING...when the countess double-crossed James Mason? She would spy on the Germans, she would help Mason's valet character, Diello, spy on the British. Like Diello said, money was like electric light to her. She gave no thought to the source until it was shut off. And in their last conversation it was obvious to her that Diello considered the money he made from spying to be his money, not theirs. Diello's big mistake during all of this is an underlying belief that there is any honor among thieves, and not realizing this is not a business venture as far as any of the parties are concerned.

The film is about a valet at the British embassy in neutral Turkey using the lack of any strong security measures at that embassy to steal Allied secrets and sell them to the Germans, amassing a large fortune in just a couple of months. It is true he wants a life of leisure in a peaceful place, but he is also in love with the now impoverished Countess Anna Staviska. And he knows she has a mercenary soul, and though she might have been attracted to him when he was her late husband's valet, she would never give herself to any man unless he had wealth.

Post-war thrillers about WWII were usually much better than anything made during the war because they could be honest about the mercenary people who had no patriotism. Such people always exist. However, I did note that the movie made a point of Diello saying that he was actually born in Albania, not England. This was supposedly based on a true story, so I do not know if that was the truth, or just added to keep the British from looking bad.

Mason and the countess get the best lines of the film, but the Germans get a bunch too as they are shown - at least at the embassy - thinking more for themselves than you would give them credit.

This is full of twists and turns, and do watch this to the very end, because the final irony is enough even to find Diello's funny bone.

Loved watching James Mason in this, he portrayed such a smarmy and condescending attitude perfectly. Unfortunately I found the story a little dull after I had researched the actual events after watching about half of this. Before doing so I had the impression the traitor was British which made the story more fascinating - why would a Brit do such a thing? Once I found out the truth I lost interest in this film.

After a wonderful day catching up with friends in Milton Keynes,I decided to wrap things up by watching a movie on Talking Pictures at the hotel. Hearing praise in the past for this title, I got ready to count to five.

View on the film:

Scheming to go behind enemy lines, in order to leak them details about his own side, James Mason gives an excellent performance as Diello, who slithers with a psychopathic charming gentlemen image, hiding the sting of his deadly intent to spy on his fellow officials,and take snaps of their official secret documents.

Made with just months to go before his contract with Fox ran out, (and later claiming that studio head Darryl F. Zanuck had cut out some of the best scenes from the movie) co-writer (with Michael Wilson)/ director Joseph L. Mankiewicz & Thieves' Highway (1949-also reviewed) cinematographer Norbert Brodine run the incredible real life espionage, into a dry stage-bound atmosphere, via firmly sticking to mid-shots in interchangeable offices which drains the tension of Diello's spying, until Bernard Herrmann's rousing score encourages Diello to reveal his plan in his final mission.

Doing uncredited re-writing on the project, Mankiewicz fills the screenplay by Michael Wilson with slick playful dialogue which bounces between Diello attempting to catch the gaze of Staviska, (played by a glamorous Danielle Darrieux) and going on a charm offensive to make those on the other side trust him,by showing the secrets hidden between his fingers.

The film opens in 1944 at an embassy affair in neutral Turkey. The German ambassador, von Papen, slips out of the ballroom where the soprano is carrying on about the ride of the Valkyries, remarking, "Wagner makes me sick," and chats with Danielle Darrieux, a wealthy French countess who has been chased from France to Poland to England by falling bombs. She pleads with von Papen for money. She'll do anything to regain her estate and its treasures. She can be very beguiling. She can be a spy. Von Papen excuses himself politely and leaves. Another guest is standing nearby, eyeballing Darrieux. She sneers a little and tells him, "Please, don't stand there staring at me as if you were worth more than your salary."

Good old, literate Joseph Mankiewitz, the writer and director who gave us "Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy ride." Most of the good lines are given to James Mason as the British Ambassador's valet in Ankara. Valets, like most servants, are given what the sociologist Erving Goffman called "non-person treatment." They're regarded as items of convenience of pieces of furniture, and they know enough to keep family secrets. Mason, as "Cicero", his code name in German Intelligence, knows enough to keep family secrets too. He also knows enough to get the combination to the embassy's safe, remove valuable documents, photograph them, and sell them to German agents, no matter how dubious those German agents might be. They continue to suspect that he's a British double agent and they fail to act on his information, even the time and place of the D-Day landings on Normandy.

There are several double crosses, which I won't describe in detail. When Mason has all the money he thinks he needs to live like a gentleman in Rio de Janeiro with his former employer, Darrieux, as his mistress, she runs off to Switzerland with all the dough. And when Mason finally reaches Rio and stands on his veranda in the evening breeze, drinking high-falutin' wine, an incident takes place that I don't believe because I think it may have been ripped off from "The Lavender Hill Mob."

In the end it's a tale of morality. The moral is: Make sure you pay your charwoman enough so that she doesn't take a Minox camera to the material you've stashed in the family vault.

In the period between 1918 - 1939 most of the countries in Eastern Europe were notable for the strongman dictatorships that had arisen out of the ashes of the First World War. Except for Czechoslovakia and the doomed Baltic trio of states and Finland and Austria (for awhile), Poland, Hungary, Italy, and the Balkan states all became dictatorships. One might, on the surface, have added the former Ottoman Empire now Turkey. Certainly Turkey had some black marks against it: the Armenian massacres in the World War, and the brutal massacre of Greeks at Smyrna in 1922. But aside from those, Turkey surprised everyone. It's strongman leader, Mustapha Kemal (a.k.a. Kemal Attaturk) was determined to make Turkey a strong western country. To this day the military (from which Kemal came out of) has remained pro-Western, and been pushing (despite difficulties with Armenia, Greece, the Kurds, and Muslim fundamentalists) to keep modernizing Turkey. His (Kemal's) was the only positive spin on a dictatorship from Eastern Europe in that period.

Kemal was lucky that he had a keen lieutenant and successor named Ismet Inonu. Ismet was as determined to continue Kemal's goals after his friend's death in 1938. One goal that both of them had discussed and agreed upon was that Turkey was not going to be pulled into any further nonsense that it could not afford to get involved in. This meant that if there was any major war hitting Europe again (and both Kemal and Ismet fully knew one was on the way after 1933) Turkey was going to be neutral. This was, on the surface, surprising and disappointing to the Axis when war came in 1939 - 1940. Hitler figured that, as Turkey had been allied to Germany in World War I it would be allied again in World War II. Actually Kemal (and Ismet) were less than enchanted by such an idea. Kemal made his reputation as a great military hero by his leadership against the British at Gallipoli. While the German commander Liman Von Sanders, took kudos for much of the triumph there, Kemal fumed at this - he knew that Von Sanders made several severe blunders that cost Turkish lives, and that he looked at the Turks as cannon fodder. Kemal was determined that no Turk would die for Germany again. Ismet swore the same thing.

It is for this reason that Turkey is neutral from 1939 to 1945 (as De Velera's Eire was also neutral). This meant that the embassies of all the major powers were active in Ankara during the war, and that much spy activity was going on there as a result. Hollywood did take notice of it twice (as far as I can recall) - in 1943 when Warner Brothers made a film of Eric Ambler's 1940 novel BACKGROUND TO DANGER about a German plot to force Turkey into the war as an Axis ally (Sidney Greenstreet as the Nazi agent against George Raft as the American one), and the 1942 film JOURNEY INTO FEAR, where German agents are after an American engineer (Joseph Cotton) who has been arming Turkish ships. That too was from an Eric Ambler novel.

With this as the background, you can suddenly understand the story of "Operation Cicero". Ulysses Diello (James Mason) in the film (his real name was Bazna) is personal valet to the British Ambassador to Turkey (Walter Hampden). But he is gifted spy, and has proof of it which he takes to the German embassy's espionage chief Moyzisch (Oskar Karlweis). Actually the information by itself would not unduly impress Moyzisch (it could be a plant for all that), but Diello opens the embassy safe while Moyzisch is out of the room. He knows that in Germany, since 1933, Hitler's birthday or his date of coming to power are the universal combinations favored in government organizations for their safes.

The pieces of information that Cicero (the code name for Mason) checks out - although there is always a lingering sense of doubt by Moyzisch's higher ups in German intelligence. They continue paying Mason in British pounds (he may give them the information, but Mason has little faith the Germans are going to win the war). In the meantime the leak has been noticed by British intelligence, which sends Michael Rennie to investigate. Soon he begins to concentrate on Mason. Mason feels he still can carry on his espionage business. However Mason has started romancing a Countess (Danielle Darrieux) whom he once knew as a servant. She may be playing him for a sucker - but even if she is, he is determined to carry off the greatest espionage coup of all time. He is aware of some large scale Allied invasion being planned - and a copy of the plans is at the British embassy.

The film shows what actually happened. He did get the information regarding "Operation Overlord" and sold it to the Germans. And their subsequent use of this masterstroke demonstrated again how smart Cicero was in judging German "intelligence". It is an exciting spy thriller, and (on the whole) factual. Mason, Rennie, Darrieux, Hampden give pretty good accounts for themselves in this film, and Joseph Mankiewicz' script and direction are excellent. A highly worthy film to be seen.