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| Hedy Lamarr |
A LADY WITHOUT PASSPORT (1950). Director: Joseph H. Lewis.
Peter Karczag (John Hodiak of
Lifeboat) is an immigration officer assigned to Havana, where he pretends to be a man named Josef Gombush. Peter is hoping to get the goods on Palinov (George Macready), who illegally gets people out of Cuba. One of the hopefuls is Marianne Loress (Hedy Lamarr), who is desperate to get back to the United States. Things are complicated when Peter and Marianne meet and fall for one another. Palinov takes Marianne and others on a flight to Florida and Peter follows ...
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| John Hodiak and Hedy Lamarr |
A Lady Without Passport cobbles together elements from other and better movies and comes up with ... nothing. The movie proceeds without ever engaging our sympathies or even much interest for the cardboard characters on display. Although the actors do the best they can, none of them -- not even the formidable George Macready of
Gilda -- can bring them to life. There is little if any action until the final minute or so, and it isn't worth waiting for. The movie is short, but not short enough. James Craig is a colleague of Peter's and Steven Hill of
Mission: Impossible fame plays another fed.
Verdict: You can hardly wait until it's over. *.
Too bad--what a good cast. But a poor script is hard to surmount!
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Yes, you sit there enjoying the stars but waiting for something really interesting to happen. No such luck!
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