Search - Inside The Lines on DVD

An interesting "early talkie" spy yarn

Tom Webb | Tokyo Japan | 01/26/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This is an entertaining early sound film, one of a spate of WWI films made that year (1930). Ralph Forbes was a fairly popular leading man at that time, and made a number of similarly-themed adventure films. Betty Compson was nearing the end of her star days, and heading for second-leads and small parts. Montague Love was an all-purpose (and excellent), authority figure, or villain. He was memorable as the nasty Bishop of the Black Canons in the 1938 "Adventures of Robin Hood" (and also as Henry VIII in the 1937 "The Prince and the Pauper"). Mischa Auer was still playing sinister types at this time, as he hadn't yet broken out into the comedy parts he became famous for, in movies like "My Man Godfrey" and "Destry Rides Again." He was a zany character.

The cloak-and-dagger stuff here is fun, though it is not anything exceptional. It seems fitting that Charlie Chan's creator had a hand in it. It is interesting in that this was made not too long after the war itself, so it has a topical quality that more recent films don't have. You can guess that many of the people involved in the film probably served in the war, or, at the very least, remembered it well. So it has an immediacy about it, just like other films from the era, like "Hell's Angels," "All Quiet on the Western Front," "Journey's End," the original "The Dawn Patrol," "Westfront 1918," etc. Filmmakers were looking back at a period not too distant. Kind of like the spate of Vietnam War films that came out in the late '70s. The recent past. Anyway, I would recommend taking a look at this film. It is melodrama with some historical interest."