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The king's secret, the illusionist's lens. The eponymous European tycoon is "a tough baby to get to," the investigative lout on his trail is a fortune-hunting Yank (Robert Arden), "the world's prize sucker." Stripper (Patricia Medina) to heiress (Paola Mori), stepping stones pointing to the Spanish castle where a soiree swirls with plaster Goyas. The mask comes off and there he is in peeling makeup, ogre, trickster, deity, Orson Welles by any other name. (Neptune and Santa Claus are among the explicit modalities, the resemblance to Stalin goes unmentioned.) "A phenomenon of an age of dissolution and crisis," a dossier for a forgotten past, a string of killings to keep the princess in the dark. Paris, Tangiers, Mexico, Munich... The impenetrability of international intrigue is the chaos of international production, the wunderkind in exile wouldn't want it any other way. "Didn't you ever read any fairy tales?" A jagged reconsideration of Citizen Kane and The Lady from Shanghai and The Third Man (a hophead's accordion fills the screen like Reed's zither), a shambolic arabesque and an astounding testament. Special guest gargoyles populate the giddy-sinister clutter: Michael Redgrave swishing around a curio shop in bathrobe and hairnet; Mischa Auer rolling up his sleeves to feed his flea circus; Katina Paxinou with spread cards, dangling cigarettes and bottomless peepers; a slumped Akim Tamiroff mewling for goose liver. "So what's funny?" "Old age." The seesawing low angle turns a chandelier into a gargantuan crown at the casino and makes figures roll like marbles in a yacht cabin, the dizzying Welles outlook builds to an unmanned plane after the monstre sacré evaporates from heartbreak. "You see, I promised you this was poetic." Appropriately venerated by Truffaut and Rohmer for Cahiers du Cinéma, then absorbed by Godard and Robbe-Grillet in Alphaville and L'Immortelle. Cinematography by Jean Bourgoin. With Grégoire Aslan, Jack Watling, Peter van Eyck, Suzanne Flon, Frederick O'Brady, Tamara Shayne, Gert Fröbe, and Terence Longdon. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |