The Adventures of Tartu Reviews

This far-fetched but involving wartime espionage picture opens in London in 1940 as a British officer, Capt. Terence Stevenson (Robert Donat), is assigned to sneak behind enemy lines, infiltrate a Nazi-run poison gas factory in Czechoslovakia, obtain a secret formula, and destroy the plant. Stevenson poses as chemical engineer Jan Tartu, a member of the Rumanian Iron Guard, and is provided with papers that will secure his safe passage to the Hungarian border. Believed to be a refugee, "Tartu" is given a job in the factory as an assembly line foreman and lodging in the house that has been commandeered by Inspector Otto Vogel (Walter Rilla). Living under the same roof are the Czech proprietress, Anna Palacek (Phyllis Morris); her daughter, Paula (Glynis Johns); and the attractive and fiercely independent Maruschka (Valerie Hobson), the mistress of a Nazi commandant. It's not long before "Tartu" discovers that Paula is a member of the underground and Maruschka an Allied agent. Donat turns in one of his most playful and entertaining performances, though today, in light of his great work in THE 39 STEPS and THE GHOST GOES WEST, it is barely remembered.