State Secret

Dr John Marlowe, an American surgeon working in England, is invited to Vosnia, an invented eastern European country, to receive an award and demonstrate his operation. He has in fact been tricked into operating on the country’s dictator, and once he knows something he was not meant to know he becomes the object of a shoot-to-kill manhunt. Fleeing, he takes refuge with an English-speaking performer, Lisa Robinson, and the two try to get across the mountains. Written and directed by Sidney Gilliat from a novel by Roy Huggins, the film had a linguist from London University build an artificial Vosnian out of Latin and Slavic elements so as to avoid political trouble; Jack Hawkins said it was grammatically impeccable and almost unspeakable. Douglas Fairbanks Jr and Glynis Johns take the leads.