The Adventures of Tartu (1943)

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

aka Tartu (1943) aka Sabotage Agent (1943)Directed by Harold Bucquet, with a story by John Higgins and a screenplay by John Lee Mahin and Howard Emmett Rogers, this slightly above average espionage thriller was the first film MGM Studios was able to get Robert Donat to agree to do after his Oscar winning performance in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939); he had a right of refusal clause in his contract.As British Captain Terence Stevenson, who defuses a bomb in a partially collapsed London hospital during World War II, Donat's character is asked to assume the identity of Romanian chemist Jan Tartu in order to infiltrate and destroy a German poison gas factory hidden in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Stevenson was chosen to become a spy because of his familiarity with the area and the languages from his youth. As Tartu, he pretends to be a dandy that wants to serve der Fuhrer (Adolf Hitler), but must make contact with the Czech resistance while avoiding detection and capture by the Nazis for whom he'll work. Valerie Hobson, Walter Rilla, Glynis Johns, Phyllis Morris, and Martin Miller are among those who also appear in key roles.When the only contact Tartu knows is captured, and later killed, right after they'd met, he must find a way to find and get help from the Czech resistance without alerting Nazi Inspector Otto Vogel (Rilla) and the other Germans. Vogel assigns Tartu to live in Anna Palacek's (Morris) boarding house, and a job watching Czech slave laborers in a munitions plant. Vogel has eyes for Maruschuka Lanova (Hobson), who lives in the same boarding house as Tartu, and Anna's daughter Paula (Johns).Tartu soon learns that all three women are part of the resistance movement and, after protecting Paula when she'd killed a German general, he earns Maruschuka's trust such that she approaches the resistance board, run by Doctor Novotny (Miller). In the meantime, careless Paula is caught trying to sabotage some of the artillery shells by another Nazi officer right while Tartu is nearby.Quick on his feet, Tartu decides to go straight to the plant's manager with a cover story that he'd been making friends with some of the Czech's to infiltrate their resistance. This leaves him free and clear, but another in the resistance hears this "confession" and tells it to Novotny who now, along with Maruschuka, suspects Tartu really is a Nazi. So, Maruschuka, who'd begun to fall in love with Tartu (beware the woman scorned!) decides to use Vogel to kill Tartu, who's now frustrated that he can't make contact with the resistance at the very time that he's gotten reassigned to the secret chemical plant.I don't want to spoil what happens next, but it's cleverly done and, naturally, works out for the best. Plus, just when you think the story's over, there's another few minutes of drama involving an escape.

Robert Donat gives a very spirited performance as a British spy fluent in languages who is assigned to sabotage a Nazi gas factory in Czechoslovakia. He's more action-oriented than usual in a role requiring a lot of physical action while keeping one step ahead of the Nazis.His spying activities also include some romantic moments with lovely Valerie Hobson, a woman who openly flirts with Nazi officers while working with the Czech underground. She and Donat join forces eventually but some misunderstandings almost ruin their partnership. The clever plot takes a number of interesting twists as the story unfolds in a brisk and very compelling manner.Photography is first rate as are the various sets, especially the unique looking laboratory with its glass elevator overlooking an elaborate looking set design. Donat is charming in the central role and gets solid support from an excellent British supporting cast. Especially good are Walter Rilla as an officer in love with Hobson and Glynis Johns in a small role as an ill-fated Czech loyalist.Highly recommended as one of the best espionage yarns from the U.K. during the war years.

"Sabotage Agent" (aka, The Adventures of Tartu) is an excellent WWII action film. It begins with the bombing of London in 1940. It then moves into an espionage and spy thriller, and gives a very good account of the underground that operated in Nazi-occupied countries. The area covered is the Czech Republic. Until the fall of the Iron Curtin 20 years ago, very little was known about the underground that operated in eastern European countries. This film tells one story about it. The acting is top notch by all involved. The plot, writing and direction are first rate. A "best" movie for the quality of the production and what it shows about one aspect of WWII that is still so little told or understood today. The film has considerable historical value for these reasons, as well. A first-rate war, action and intrigue film produced in England. Excellent all around.

THE ADVENTURES OF TARTU, aka SABOTAGE AGENT contains some of the most wonderfully silly propaganda to survive WW2. In the darkest days of the war, British propaganda used every means possible to raise the moral of the British people. Char women would go to France and destroy gestapo headquarters. Churchill's friend and a member of the Royal family disobeyed orders and lost his ship and this became the uber heroic IN WHICH WE SERVE. Lesle Howard, a real life secret agent, reprised the Baroness Orczy character in Nazi held Europe as Pimpernel Smith. While full scale efforts against Germany in Norway, Greece and France were full scale disasters, the notion in propaganda films was that one man could wreak almighty justice upon the Nazi monster.In SABOTAGE AGENT aka ADVENTURES OF TARTU, the slight and sickly Robert Donat is gotten up as a master war hero. He is introduced as a cool headed, cold blooded bomb disposal expert who is drafted into being flown to Romania in the disguise of a well known (but dead) Rumanian near do well, giving Donat a chance to do a stereotypical and quite insulting imitation of what some more offensive Englishmen would call a 'greasy wog'. As a repulsive womanizing slime ball who is also a high ranking member of the Rumanian equivalent of the fascists, it doesn't take long before Donat has presented himself at a Czechoslovakian factory producing poison gas. It is Donat's mission to blow up the factory before they can ship the gas which he does escaping with his new girlfriend and assorted helpers and contacts in a stolen JU-88 .Its been said that when Goebbels saw British propaganda he was so thrilled that it was so crude because that meant German propaganda was so superior. In the end, of course, the quality of propaganda had no effect on the war. Except for seven films, all German propaganda films were made to lull the population into a sense of well being by NOT focusing on the issue at hand (the war). The British preferred to show how they were prevailing (which they weren't) and would prevail over the enemy. In other words - lies all around.The reality was very different. Nationalists su generis hate each other nationalities, even their allies, and the Germans were quite contemptuous of the Rumanians who were considered unreliable in battle. They wouldn't have allowed one no matter how puffed up their CV and references were within a million miles of a top secret project. The Germans are seen as a bunch of horny buffoons easily outsmarted with out their being any sense of the systematic rings of security and cumbersome but defensive bureaucracy surrounding a military occupation.Attempts at sabotage in Czechoslovakia by organized resistance, particularly in the Skodawerk were met with mass reprisal, particularly at the Skoda werk. The most famous operation in Czechoslovakia was the assassination of the Reich protector Heidrich, which was carried out, for political reasons, by members of the Czechoslovakian Army parachuted in for the task which resulted in repression so serious that the Czech resistance was effectively eliminated as a fighting force for the rest of the war and the town of Lidice was destroyed, the men murdered, the women and children scattered and the town razed and plowed under. The incident was so notorious in its time, plays, operas, poetry and at least two films (HANGMEN ALSO DIE, directed by Fritz Lang and HITLER'S MADMAN, directed by Douglas Sirk, were made of the story. The free world swore to remember Lidice forever. It forgot. And poison gas, the Germans had plenty of it which, even to the end, they didn't use in battle. Except on Jews in the Concentrations Camps.Such isn't the concern of the propaganda film however. What's needed is one guy with a steel resolves, good nerves and a bit of luck on his side. A briefcase full of little bombs are enough to take out a whole mountainside. Today the ideal hero, or 'Good Guy' would be SFX'd committing visually unlikely and physically impossible deeds to a crashingly loud soundtrack a la MISSION IMPOSSIBLE or others of that ilk. This is the ancestor of those super action heros, when there was still a lingering illusion that somehow he'd be, well, a gentleman. Hence Donat and not Schwarzenegger or Stallone shows up.The weirdest thing I found about the film is the escape. I've looked at the film multiple times and I can't figure out from certain shots if they were somehow using a real JU-88 or a mock -up. Would they, in circa 1942-43, take the time and expense to make a flyable JU-88, or did they actually have a flyable one on hand? I can piece out how they might have gotten a hold of one and why they would want to keep it flyable. (One was flown to Great Britain in May 1943). And was the 'they' behind this project MGM or either or both the British and American governments? The director and writers were from Hollywood though the film was made in London and all of the technicians were British. Some shots of the JU-88 could be a miniature (when the plane is seen flying into a cloud), some could be file film (the JU-88 is first seen in a rear projection process shot), some shots could be made using a full scale mock up (very expensive) and even be made to appear to be taxiing, but there are some other shots that could only be made by a flyable airframe. A Beaufort Bomber had been used for a few seconds in the beginning of the film and I thought one could have been given some cosmetic surgery but the long nacelles for the Junkers Jumo engines behind their large radial radiators are pretty unmistakable. Apparently the propaganda films could be somewhat cheesy as film but never cheep.