ThiefHott Too much of everything

FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Steineded How sad is this?

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

morrison-dylan-fan After an impressive run for most of 2016,I've been disappointed that the BBC have been showing less of the more obscure RKO creations. Taking a quick look at the film section on BBC iPlayer,I was thrilled to see that they had unearthed a rare RKO British Spy flick,which led to me getting this canary out of the pit.The plot: Going deep undercover for the British, blonde Sally Maitland boards a ship to Canada. On the ship Maitland meets Jan Orlock,who unknown to Maitland has been secretly sent to protect her. During the journey,the ship is stopped by a Nazi heavy cruiser that kidnaps Orlock,which leads to Maitland realising how deep in the pit of espionage this yellow canary is. View on the film:Flying in during the war,director Herbert Wilcox (who would soon get married to the star!) & cinematographer Mutz Greenbaum are unable to fully shake off the limitations of the times,with scenes in trains and chases being played out stage-bound instead of the great outdoors. Working within the limitations, Wilcox and Greenbaum display sharp eyes for building a Spiv atmosphere with stylised shots seeding doubt on who side Sally Maitland is on,from impressive tracking shots that go down every level of the boat,to overlapping shots following Sally's double dealing.Partly based on the real Hitler devotee Unity Mitford,the screenplay by P.M. Bower/Miles Malleson and DeWitt Bodeen delivers a clear message of the British public needing to be on the lookout for Nazis in their midst. Following Wilcox's path,the writers cut through the propaganda with an impressive level of ambiguity Spiv Film Noir,via allowing Sally to swing the pendulum of trust between the Nazis and the British. Pulling the feathers in every scene, Anna Neagle gives a fantastic performance as Sally,thanks to Neagle subtly using facial expressions to give doubt over which side this canary sings for.

Igenlode Wordsmith This film was ultimately something of a disappointment, declining in its final moments into a standard wartime flag-waver. This is a pity, because for much of its length it is effectively scripted, intriguing, and well-directed. I get the feeling that, having set up a complex premise with considerable skill, no-one was quite able to come up with any idea what to do with it.As befits a film about espionage and counter-espionage, most of the running length is spent in establishing exactly what is going on. The casting of Anna Neagle is in some respects a drawback in this -- there's nothing wrong with her performance, it's simply that it is unthinkable in a Wilcox/Neagle picture that England's Anna can ever really be on the 'wrong' side. The intended twist revealing her to be a double agent isn't quite so much of a surprise as it could be, and there can be no further ambiguity in her loyalties however suspiciously she behaves. That said, however, while I was assuming at the start that something more had to be going on than was evident, it's a tribute to Miss Neagle's acting that by the mid-point of the film I was beginning seriously to doubt my assumptions, and wonder if the requisite 'happy' ending would instead be provided by the character's last-minute conversion and sacrifice to foil the Fuehrer's plans! The picture starts as it goes on, elliptically and intelligently, by delineating in economical strokes what turn out to be two entirely irrelevant minor characters as a means to set the time and place: London, in a bombing raid. Our hard-eyed heroine is introduced in the first of many suspicious circumstances -- apparently signalling to German aircraft from a room in which a man's death has been made to look like suicide. We learn that she is unwelcome in polite Society before we learn, via a series of snippets, why -- in a wartime England, she alone refuses to condemn the Germans.Sally Maitland is a Unity-Mitford-like figure, but one endowed with a family of ardent patriots: the film is well-enough done to create an unlikely empathy for her point of view. After all, she has actually been to Germany, speaks the language fluently, and lived among its people; she is a proud girl, and most of those she is dealing with know nothing whatsoever about the country for which they express such hate. It's an uncomfortable shift of perception for the viewer, worthy of that profoundly English outsider, Emeric Pressburger.But Sally is not merely anti-war -- she makes a parade of being pro-Nazi, out to betray ship positions, sabotage the blackout, etc. It was at this point that I began to suspect the film of propaganda; surely a real Nazi agent wouldn't openly court suspicion, but would do her best in public to blend in? Yet she pointedly attaches herself to a Polish refugee officer, a member of the despised Slav races. On his side it is perhaps, as he says, chivalry for a girl with the courage to stand openly against the prevailing wind, but for a loyal Nazi, this is strange behaviour.So when, in Canada, 'Jan' finally draws out a cigarette-case with an emblazoned swastika, everything for me became suddenly very clear. It is at this moment, and not via the subsequent dialogue with the British Intelligence officer, that the true 'reveal' takes place; it is at this moment that we understand why she has been proclaiming herself as she has. Sally Maitland is indeed too blatant to be true. She has been sent to Canada as bait, to lure out a suspected Nazi network.From this point the film becomes a double-agent thriller, more concerned with ingenious mechanics than psychological tension, and inevitably becomes a little formulaic. It's still a pretty taut ride, with a few explanations yet to be tied in -- what exactly was she up to during that air-raid, for example? -- before the end.Unfortunately at the intended climax it does fall down rather, from the grand revelation of the Nazi mastermind's identity onwards. The best thing that resourceful Sally can think of to pass her message is to break cover and shout it down the telephone with the lights switched off, whereupon her brand new beau appears almost instantaneously (just how far is it from Mountie HQ?) to hold up the crooks single-handed. The convoy is rapidly rescued by pinpoint bombing despite zero visibility, and the supposedly shot-dead Sally is saved on the operating table. (Although some explanation is at least provided for this, in the form of the fatal cigarette case that stopped the bullet -- not at all clear on the small screen.) And the family reunion, with its obligatory gung-ho jollity, I found fairly cringe-making in contrast to the poised intelligence of what had gone before. The original pitch for the film was presumably 'Upperclass Nazi ultimately revealed as double agent': beyond that point, inspiration seems to have been somewhat lacking.For most of its length, however, "Yellow Canary" (the title referring to the heroine's supposed cowardice) is actually a pretty good picture. Anna Neagle gives an excellent performance as ice-cold Sally -- although she is less convincing in her 'reform' to a gushing, bumptious creature at the end -- and there are fascinating moments when you can watch her switch on a character in her double-agent role more or less at the drop of a hat. Margaret Rutherford has a priceless cameo as the sort of ultra-patriotic Englishwoman whose careless talk costs lives, and a young Richard Greene (of "Robin Hood" fame) demonstrates no mean acting ability himself, as his Intelligence commander switches between suave hero and the pose of silly-ass man about town. The intelligent script owes a good deal to writers Miles Malleson (character actor with scripts from "Nell Gwyn" to the Kordas' "Thief of Baghdad" to his credit) and DeWitt Bodeen (of the offbeat "Cat People").

James Hitchcock Sally Maitland, the daughter of an upper-class family, makes herself unpopular in wartime Britain because of her pro-Nazi views- so much so that the authorities arrange for her to be sent to Canada. (The character of Sally was probably based upon Diana and Unity Mitford, two of the aristocratic Mitford sisters, both of whom held extreme right-wing views. The closeness of the first syllables of the names "Maitland" and "Mitford" is presumably no coincidence). While on board ship, she meets, and is romanced by, a refugee Polish army captain, forced to flee his homeland after the German invasion, and Jim Garrick, an officer with British Naval Intelligence, who has been sent to keep watch on her.Anna Neagle was a highly popular actress in Britain during this period. She specialised in playing heroines, particularly British national heroines such as Queen Victoria, Edith Cavell and the aviator Amy Johnson. To have played a villain, especially a traitor to her country, would have been a remarkable departure for her, so it is no surprise when Sally proves to be not the villain but the heroine of the piece, an agent with British Intelligence, sent to infiltrate a German spy-ring which is plotting to destroy the vital Canadian port of Halifax. In another twist typical of this type of spy drama, the supposed Polish officer turns out not to be a Pole at all, but rather one of the German spies.Anna Neagle's part, which she pulls off very well, can be considered a "double acting" role; she is playing the part of a character who is herself playing a part, pretending to be something she is not. During the first part of the film, while she is pretending to be a Nazi sympathiser, she seems convincing enough, with her cold, aristocratic hauteur, yet when the revelation comes about her true identity and motives I was not surprised; there is clearly something in her bearing which prepares the audience psychologically for a twist of this sort. There is also an amusing cameo from Margaret Rutherford as a cantankerous old battleaxe on the ship. (Those like me who have less than fond memories of the British TV show "That's Life"- an odd mixture of consumer investigations and childish humour- from the seventies and eighties will be amused to learn that the comedian Cyril Fletcher was churning out his appalling poetry as early as the forties).The film was obviously made as wartime propaganda, with the aim not only of keeping up morale but also of warning the British public to be on their guard against Nazi spies. Despite this, it is one of those wartime films which has remained watchable long after the end of the war.6/10

Michael O'Keefe Its 1940 and an attractive socialite Sally Maitland(Anna Neagle)is shunned by friends and loses favor with her wealthy family when she shows sympathy for the Nazi cause. She leaves England and arrives in Halifax, where she gets strange looks because of her reputation being a Nazi sympathiser. An infatuation develops between the ostracised Sally and British Lieutinent Commander Jim Garrick(Richard Greene). Canada feels the WWII heat as Sally and Garrick deal with assignments that pit them against each other. With movie goers needing a happy ending, it is revealed that Maitland is actually a double agent who mastered her deception well. Also in the cast: George Thorpe, Marjorie Fielding, Franklin Dyall and a Margaret Rutherford cameo.