A Lady Without Passport

I've never seen Hedy Lamarr act before and she was better than I expected, pulling off the noir leading lady role reasonably well and Hodiak has pretty good chemistry with her. The story of illegal immigration is handled very well, both in its light social commentary and as a suspenseful noir story. There's not quite anything to push it into the very top tier of noir, but a very good time with little, if any, flaws.

Viewed July 17, 2015. There's one great moment of filmmaking in this, in a shot where a gun fires wildly into a foggy swamp. Other than that, this is a pretty rote and uneventful thriller. I do like the way it pushes its social commentary, but I can't recommend a film that has a sequence as dumb as the plane chase in this one.

Fairly routine but still fun thriller. Lewis doesn't reach the heights of his previous effort, Gun Crazy, but the noir atmosphere is thick enough with some fine photography. There's a dance sequence that's entirely superfluous but magnificently shot. Hedy Lamarr is lackluster but passable as the romantic interest, John Hodiak has a certain Montalban-esque charm as the agent. The film bogs down quite a bit during the plane chase near the end, but otherwise clips along nicely.

Goes on quite a adventure with Hedy Lamarr in the middle of complicated international affairs. They surround her with interesting male figures to enhance the whole thing, but that doesn't stop A Lady Without Passport (1950) feeling like a one-dimensional popcorn flick a lot of the time. Thankfully a lot of that was entertaining, even if the deeper connection wasn't really present.