The Hour Before the Dawn (1944) YIFY - Download Movie TORRENT

Reviewed by utgard14 6 / 10

"You don't think the Germans could win, do you, Daddy?"

WW2 film about a conscientious objector (Franchot Tone) and his girlfriend (Veronica Lake), an ineffectual German spy. Mostly talked about today, if at all, for Lake's bad performance and how this film hurt her career. Her accent is admittedly very poor. Still, I enjoy this one. The objector plot with Tone is interesting and Lake has some exciting scenes. Good support from Binnie Barnes, Henry Stephenson, and John Sutton. The worst part of the film is the little kid played by David Leland. He would make anyone join the enemy.

Reviewed by boblipton 6 / 10

Good Wartime Spy Drama

Franchot Tone is a teacher from a landed country family in England. As the events in Europe unroll, from the Anschluss through the seizing of the Sudetenland, he remains a staunch and reasoned pacifist. He loves England, but will not kill. When Britain declares war, he seeks and obtains Conscientious Objector status, and goes to work on a nearby farm. What he does not know is that the woman he loves, Veronica Lake, is not just an Austrian refugee. She is a Nazi spy.It's a competent wartime programmer from the solid director Frank Tuttle, filled with the British Colony actors: Binnie Barnes, Henry Stephenson, Phillip Merivale and others. There are some nice performances, especially Miss Barnes as a former entertainer who calms the children during an air raid by leading them in performing "Roll Out the Barrel" to a player piano. Miss Lake is also very good, playing her role very quietly. It's not a world-beater of a movie, but a very well-done effort.

Reviewed by jjnxn-1 7 / 10

Villainess Veronica

Surely not the greatest antiwar picture ever made but hardly as bad as its reputation suggests. Veronica is a Nazi agent pretending to be an exile from her country who has managed to wheedle her way into wealthy Binnie Barnes good graces. As Binnie's personal maid she manages to also ingratiate herself with the prestigious and politically connected family Binnie has married into. Their pacifist son, Franchot Tone, falls for her which she again uses to her advantage when the cell she's involved in call on her to strike. Not a top notch Maugham adaptation but it tells its wartime story efficiently, if with a minimum of action. Veronica's career took a big hit when this failed at the box office with the critics and studio assigning most of the blame to her. Hard to see why though. She's not as assured as in her best films but she doesn't embarrass herself. Her accent is variable but you'll have definitely heard worse in other films and the lack of her signature hairstyle can be laid at the feet of the government's request for her to change it. It was during the filming of this picture that she tripped over a cable causing a miscarriage and her absence from the screen for a period of time. With the failure of this film and no immediate one to follow it up and regain ground the studio apparently lost faith in her and started casting her in fluffy junk that quickly lead to her career default. It surely didn't help that she had a reputation for being difficult, stemming from an untreated bi-polar disorder, and was unpopular at Paramount. A shame though since even miscast as she is here she still has a powerful screen presence and holds the viewers eye whenever she's in a scene.As for the rest of the film, Tone and the always welcome Binnie Barnes make the most of their parts but the direction lacks focus which even with the short running time allows the film to become slack at times.

The Hour Before the Dawn

1944

Drama / Romance / War

The Hour Before the Dawn

1944

Drama / Romance / War

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Movie Reviews

"You don't think the Germans could win, do you, Daddy?"

Good Wartime Spy Drama

Villainess Veronica

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