Confidential Agent Reviews

Boyer, a once-famous concert pianist, travels secretly from Spain to England in 1937 to purchase coal for the Loyalist cause and to keep the fuel from falling into Fascist hands. He meets Bacall before arriving in London and is almost killed by Francen, Nazi spymaster. Boyer goes to a small London hotel operated by Paxinou, a dedicated Fascist who practices her sadism on a helpless hotel employee, Hendrix. She later pushes the girl out a window to her death while fellow agent Lorre looks on, smirking. Boyer is hounded and hunted by Fascist goons while trying to prevent Francen from making a deal with Fascist-leaning coal king Herbert, but he is too late. He addresses the workers with an impassioned speech, telling them that the fuel they have dug out of the earth will be used to eventually kill women and children in blockaded free Spain, but he is shouted down. Before returning in defeat to Spain, Boyer confronts Paxinou, telling her that she will answer for Hendrix's death. She takes poison before police arrive. Boyer then holds a gun on Lorre. Slowly he pulls the trigger but the automatic misfires. But the excitement is too much for Lorre, who dies of a heart attack. Later, Boyer reads in a newspaper that his speech has caused the cancellation of the coal contract. Bacall, who has aided him all along, joins him in his political cause. It is assumed that they will be together. She remarks: "I can't be faithful to people I can't see, so I came along." This was Bacall's second film after her electrifying debut in TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT with Humphrey Bogart, but CONFIDENTIAL AGENT did not serve her career well. It is a plodding film under Shumlin's unimaginative direction. (He had directed only one other film, WATCH ON THE RHINE.) The dialog rings false in a pat story. Bacall's lines are forced and she delivers them in an unsure, near monotone. Her lack of enthusiasm may be due to the fact that she thought she might again be acting opposite Bogart in this film but wound up with Boyer. Bogart was originally announced to play the Boyer role, with Eleanor Parker in Bacall's slot. Both were scratched for Boyer and Bacall, a love team that didn't jell. There are some powerful scenes in this film nonetheless, e.g., Paxinou's harassment of Hendrix and Boyer's magnificent address to the miners. Bacall had actually completed THE BIG SLEEP before CONFIDENTIAL AGENT, but the latter was released first in a hurry-up attempt to cash in on her popularity. She was unhappy about Jack Warner rushing her into this contrived film and later remarked in Lauren Bacall, By Myself: "...to cast me as an aristocratic English girl was more than a stretch. It was dementia." Boyer carries the film with wonderful sensitivity, but even this marvelous actor is finally drowned in the murk and gloom of a muddled story, swarmed over by an army of grotesque creatures who steal the film away and by an unsatisfying conclusion.