Eustace Wyatt Movies

An innocent man is drawn into a web of espionage when he unwittingly comes into possession of a crucial piece of microfilm in this shadowy, ominous film noir. Fritz Lang's adaptation of Graham Greene's novel is filled with unusual touches, beginning with the fact that protagonist Stephen Neale (Ray Milland) has just been released from a mental asylum. To celebrate his return to the real world, he visits a local carnival, only to accidentally receive a "prize" meant for a Nazi agent. When he discovers the error, he turns for help to a detective, whose investigations only make the matter more complicated. Neale soon winds up on the run from both the Nazis and the police, who mistakenly believe him guilty of murder. Lang's famous expressionistic style is somewhat muted here, but Henry Sharp's crisp black-and-white cinematography sets a suitably unsettling mood, and the twists and double-crosses of Greene's story unfold at an appropriately quick pace. While it does not reach the same level of timeless classic as Carol Reed's adaptation of Greene's The Third Man four years later, Ministry of Fear stands as a well-made, thoroughly gripping and intelligent example of film noir. ~ Judd Blaise, Rovi

Director Robert Stevenson collaborated with novelist Aldous Huxley and theatrical-producer John Houseman on the screenplay for this 1944 adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's gothic romance Jane Eyre. After several harrowing years in an orphanage, where she was placed by a supercilious relative for exhibiting the forbidden trait of "willfulness," Jane Eyre (Joan Fontaine) secures work as a governess. Her little charge, French-accented Adele (Margaret O'Brien), is pleasant enough. But Jane's employer, the brooding, tormented Edward Rochester (Orson Welles), terrifies the prim young governess. Under Jane's gentle influence, Rochester drops his forbidding veneer, going so far as to propose marriage to Jane. But they are forbidden connubial happiness when it is revealed that Rochester is still married to a gibbering lunatic whom he is forced to keep locked in his attic. Rochester reluctantly sends Jane away, but she returns, only to find that the insane wife has burned down the mansion and rendered Rochester sightless. In the tradition of Victorian romances, this purges Rochester of any previous sins, making him a worthy mate for the loving Jane. The presence of Orson Welles in the cast (he receives top billing), coupled with the dark, Germanic style of the direction and photography, has led some impressionable cineasts to conclude that Welles, and not Stevenson, was the director. To be sure, Welles contributed ideas throughout the filming; also, the script was heavily influenced by the Mercury Theater on the Air radio version of Jane Eyre, on which Welles, John Houseman and musical director Bernard Herrmann all collaborated. But Jane Eyre was made at 20th Century-Fox, a studio disinclined to promote the auteur theory; like most Fox productions, this is a work by committee rather than the product of one man. This in no way detracts from the overall excellence of the film; of all adaptations of Jane Eyre (it had previously been filmed in 1913, 1915 and 1921, and has been remade several times since), this 1943 version is one of the best. Keep an eye out for an uncredited Elizabeth Taylor as the consumptive orphanage friend of young Jane Eyre (played as child by Peggy Ann Gardner). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Orson Welles had planned to produce, direct and star in RKO's Journey Into Fear, but prior commitments compelled him to vacate the director's chair in favor of Norman Foster. Joseph Cotten, who starred as an American gunnery engineer up to his armpits in international intrigue, adapted the screenplay from the novel by Eric Ambler. Targeted for extermination by the Gestapo, Cotten secretly books passage on a steamer bound from Turkey to Batumi. His fellow passengers include dancer Dolores Del Rio and her gigolo partner Jack Durant; talkative Frenchwoman Agnes Moorehead and her browbeaten husband Frank Readick; German archaeologist Eustace Wyatt; and a secretive, obese, thick-spectacled gent, played by Orson Welles' business partner Jack Moss. From the outset, it is no secret that Moss is a Nazi assassin. The question: who are his contacts, and how long will it be before Cotten is forced into a showdown? The very complex storyline was made even more so by RKO's decision to pare the film down to 69 minutes; several resultant plot gaps had to be bridged by an ongoing offscreen narration, presented in the form of a letter written by Cotten to his worried wife Ruth Warrick. As one can see, virtually the entire roster of Welles' Mercury Theatre troupe is involved in Journey into Fear. Welles himself plays colorful Turkish police officer Colonel Haki, while Everett Sloane, Hans Conried and Edgar Barrier essay significant smaller roles. Director Norman Foster so slavishly imitates the patented Wellesian visual style (following Welles' pre-production "storyboards" dictating choice of camera angle, lighting etc.) that many historians have assumed that Welles himself directed the picture. Remade for Canadian TV in 1975. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi