Helmut Dantine Movies

The Wilby Conspiracy is set in South Africa, at a time when Apartheid was the order of the day. Political activist Shack Twala (Sidney Poitier) finds an unlikely -- and reluctant -- ally in the form of the British Keogh (Michael Caine). Both Twala and Keogh are scrutinized by racist police official Horn (Nicol Williamson), who hopes that they'll lead him to the hideout of chief activist Wilby (Joe De Graft). Based on the novel by Peter Driscoll, The Wilby Conspiracy abandons its sociological overtones early on in favor of an extended chase. The film reteams Poitier and director Ralph Nelson, who, 12 years earlier, had collaborated on Lilies of the Field. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Wealthy Mexican Emilio Fernandez puts a million-dollar bounty on the head of Alfredo Garcia, who has seduced and knocked up Fernandez's daughter. Trouble is, Alfredo Garcia is already dead and buried. Barkeep Bennie (Warren Oates) is appointed by two of Fernandez's hit men (Robert Webber and Gig Young) to travel to the small town in whose cemetery Garcia is interred, planning to dig up the body and recover the head; along the way, he meets and falls for prostitute Elita (Isela Vega), who had become involved with Garcia. But these two fail to anticipate the arrival of fellow corpse-seekers, equally desperate to collect the bounty. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this drama, a former Air Force hero becomes frustrated when he is pulled from active duty and is forced to train recruits at Edwards Air Force Base. He finds instructing the young fighter pilots terribly tedious. His frustration is compounded by his fear that one of his handsome bucks will steal his pretty girl friend. This causes him to become an angry, unfair teacher. Later, the reluctant instructor learns an invaluable lesson when he is forced to save one of his best students from certain death. Suddenly he begins taking his job seriously; as a result he becomes a respected and beloved teacher. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

About the only perils that heroine Dana Wynter avoids in Fraulein are being tied to the buzzsaw and chased across the ice by bloodhouds. Wynter plays a German girl of genteel upbringing who is forced to wake up and smell the coffee when her family is killed in a WW2 air raid. She helps American officer Mel Ferrer escapes the Gestapo, then must figure out a way to elude her Russian Army captors, headed by Theodore Bikel (who later ruefully commented that more people remembered him for this film than for anything else). Escaping to the American sector of Berlin, Wynter naively registers herself as a prostitute, leading to a daunting series of tribulations. The upshot of all this is that German officer Helmut Dantine lusts after Dana because of what he thinks she is, while American officer Ferrer loves her because he knows deep down that she's not what she's supposed to be. Filmed on location, Fraulein was based on a novel by James McGowan. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Future "Master of Disaster" Irwin Allen produced this curious but inarguably fascinating adaptation of Henrik Willem Van Loon's best- selling historical volume. A Celestial Tribunal has been convened to decide the fate of the Earth after the invention of nuclear weapons, with The Devil (Vincent Price) and The Spirit of Man (Ronald Colman) debating if humankind should be allowed to continue or be exterminated once and for all. Both men present examples of human behavior at its best and worst, including Dennis Hopper as Napoleon, Hedy Lamarr as Joan of Arc, Virginia Mayo as Cleopatra, Peter Lorre as Nero, Edward Everett Horton as Sir Walter Raleigh, and Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, and Chico Marx as, respectively, Peter Minuit, Sir Isaac Newton, and a monk (yes, the producers had the daring and vision to cast the Marx Brothers without having them play any scenes together). The Story of Mankind proved to be the last film for both Ronald Colman and Hedy Lamarr; it was also the last time the three Marx Brothers appeared in the same film, though the individual Marxes appeared in a few films following this. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

War and Peace is a commendable attempt to boil down Tolstoy's long, difficult novel into 208 minutes' screen time. In recreating the the social and personal upheavals attending Napoleon's 1812 invasion of Russia, $6 million was shelled out by coproducers Carlo Ponti, Dino de Laurentiis and Paramount Pictures. Some of the panoramic battle sequences are so expertly handled by second-unit director Mario Soldati that they appear to be Technicolor-and-Vistavision newsreel footage of the actual events. Still, the film falters dramatically, principally because of a lumpy script and King Vidor's surprisingly lustreless direction. In addition, the casting is wildly consistent: for example, while Audrey Hepburn is flawless as Natasha, Henry Fonda is far too "Yankeefied" as the introspective Pierre. Proving too long and unwieldy for most audiences, War and Peace died at the box office; far more successful was the epic, scrupulously faithful 1968 version, filmed in the Soviet Union. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this political drama set during WW II, a Greek officer abandons his fiancee and his duties when the German's take-over Athens. During his flight, he has a passionate war-time affair with a beautiful gypsy. Following the war, he returns. Time passes and he becomes an official until Communist revolutionaries take over and place him on an execution list. The gypsy girl has since joined the revolutionary movement. She sees her ex-lover's name on the secret list and heads off to warn him. Unfortunately, they are caught and shot for treason. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In an on-the-run investigation, a female reporter is in a race against time to capture a prominent attorney who has been implicated in a murder committed years before when she receives an inside tip. As she collects evidence, she must stay one step ahead of him so that she doesn't become his latest victim. Good scripting and direction makes this a suspense-filled movie. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide

Escape in the Desert is a thinly disguised remake of The Petrified Forest (1936), updated with a WW II angle. Cynical Dutch pilot Philip Artveld (Philip Dorn) pays a visit to the American desert before being shipped off to the Front. He wanders into a lonely inn, where he befriends starry-eyed watiress Jane (Jean Sullivan). Before long, Philip, Jane, and several other innocent bystanders find themselves being held captive by a group of escaped German POWS, led by Captain Becker (Helmut Dantine). The existentialist philosophy of the original Robert E. Sherwood play is replaced with a great deal of Nazified prattle and All-American flagwaving, with misplaced moments of comedy relief from Alan Hale and Irene Manning. While Petrified Forest is regarded as a classic, Escape in the Desert is generally dismissed as a contrived propaganda piece. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Designed as a followup to the enormously successful Casablanca, Passage to Marseille utilizes the talents of many of the on- and off-screen personnel of the earlier Warner Bros. classic. Unfolded in a complex flashback-within-flashback structure, this is the story of Matrac (Humphrey Bogart), a freedom-loving French journalist who sacrifices his happiness and security to battle Nazi tyrrany. The film opens as French liason officer Freycinet (Claude Rains), stationed in London, tells Mantrac's story to a British reporter (John Loder). Freycinet reveals that Mantrac, happily married to Paula (Michele Morgan), was framed by pro-fascists and sentenced to Devil's Island. Here he engineered a daring escape with such lost souls as Marius (Peter Lorre), Garou (Helmut Dantine), Petit (George Tobias) and Renault (Philip Dorn). Adrift in a lifeboat, the escapees were picked up by a French vessel commandeered by pro-fascist Major Duval (Sydney Greenstreet). With the help of Mantrac and the prisoners, the ship's patriotic captain (Victor Francen) thwarted Duval's evil machinations, enabling Mantrac to continue his battle against Nazism as a member of the RAF. By modern standards, Passage to Marseille is overproduced, overdirected, overacted and overscored (by Max Steiner); however, it filled a definite need in wartime America, and proved a huge financial success. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

More so than most wartime films, Mission to Moscow must be viewed within the context of its times. Requested by President Roosevelt to make a film supportive of America's Russian allies, Warner Bros. turned to the memoirs of Ambassador Joseph H. Davies, who spent several years prior to WWII in the Soviet Union. As played by Walter Huston, Davies is a pillar of incorruptable integrity, reporting the facts "as I saw them" (only in later years was Davies revealed to be something less than a paragon of virtue who was willing to alter opinions for political, personal and financial expedience). Sent to Moscow by FDR as a means of finding out if Russia is a potentially trustworthy ally in case of war, Davies and his family are given the royal treatment by the Commissars, who display the social, technological, agricultural and artistic advances made under the Stalin regime. Invariably, the Russian citizens are shown to be singing, smiling, freedom-loving rugged individuals-in contrast to the Nazis, who are depicted as humorless automatons. In its efforts to present the USSR in the best possible light, the film glosses over the notorious Purge Trials of 1937, presenting the trials as scrupulously fair and the defendants as unabashed traitors to the Soviet cause. At one point, Russia's annexation of Finland in 1939 is "justified" by Davies' explanation that the Soviets merely wanted to protect their tiny neighbor from Nazi domination! It is unfair to label Mission to Moscow as Communistic or even left-wing, since it was merely parroting the official party line vis-a-vis US/Soviet relations in 1943. Even so, screenwriter Howard Koch found it very difficult to get film work after the war because of his contributions to this "Pinko" project (conversely, Jack Warner pulled a Pontius Pilate, washing his hands of the matter by insisting that he was strongarmed into making the film). Seen objectively, Mission to Moscow is top-rank entertainment, superbly and excitingly assembled in the manner typical of Warners and director Michael Curtiz. The huge cast includes Gene Lockhart as Molotov, attorney Dudley Field Malone as Winston Churchill, Maynart Kippen as a benign, pipe-smoking Stalin, Charles Trowbridge as Secretary Cordell Hull, Leigh Whipper as Hailie Selassie, Georges Renavent as Anthony Eden and Alex Chirva as Pierre Laval, along with the more familiar faces of Ann Harding (as Mrs. Davies), George Tobias, Eleanor Parker, Moroni Olsen, Minor Watson, Jerome Cowan, Duncan Renaldo, Mike Mazurki, Frank Faylen, Edward van Sloan, Louis-Jean Heydt, Monte Blue, Robert Shayne and even Sid (sic) Charisse. Original prints of Mission to Moscow include a 6-minute prologue delivered by the real Joseph Davies. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Norwegian resistance to the Nazi occupation of their country inspired several wartime films from Hollywood, including this Warner Bros. production, filmed in and around Monterey, California. In October 1942, a German observation airplane discovers a seaside village named Trollness where the Norwegian flag is flying over the town square. A ground patrol discovers an empty town littered with corpses, including a number of Nazi officials. The story of the massacre is told in flashback. Errol Flynn plays Gunnar Brogge, a fisherman engaged to Karen Stensgard (Ann Sheridan), whose father, Martin (alter Huston), is the village physician. Gunnar and Karen are working to undermine the Nazis. The town is divided, with the minister leading a contingent which believes that violence, even against the sadistic Germans, is morally wrong. Karen is concerned about the imminent arrival of her brother, who is known to be friendly to the German occupiers; she fears he may learn of plans by the British to deliver a supply of guns to the resistance. The Nazi commandant, Captain Konig (Helmut Dantine), keeps up the pressure to learn of any opposition to his administration, eventually deciding to execute a selected number of the villagers to force someone to reveal the extent of the resistance's schemes. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide