Journey into Fear

Howard Graham is an American engineer trying to sell naval guns to Turkey. One night in Istanbul he narrowly survives an assassination attempt. Colonel Haki, the head of the Turkish secret police, decides the only safe way to get him out of the country is by sea. Graham boards a small passenger ship. Passengers of different nationalities are aboard and one of them is watching him. The escape runs out at sea, through narrow corridors and closed cabins. Norman Foster directs. Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten adapted the screenplay from the 1940 novel by Eric Ambler. Joseph Cotten plays Graham and Orson Welles plays the head of the secret police. Dolores del Rio, Ruth Warrick and Agnes Moorehead are in the cast. It is an American production. It was Welles's third and last production for RKO; the studio interfered with the edit afterward and the American cut was reduced to sixty nine minutes. How much Welles directed is disputed; he is not credited as director, but the traces are plainly visible. In the source novel the destination of the journey was France; the adaptation changed it to the Soviet Union, reflecting how the war had moved on. The matter it treats is an ordinary man finding himself inside a spy game; Graham is not a hero, he is a frightened civilian. The film uses the narrow spaces of the ship to build a claustrophobic tension. The photography, with its shadow and angled shots, stands close to the language of noir. The ending closes at a harbour. Its limit is length; in its cut form the narrative hurries and some transitions stay broken. Who it is for: viewers curious about classic noir and Welles's early work. Who it is not for: it is short, cut down, and the ending hurried.