Paris-based New York Herald Tribune reporter Jimmy Race is sent by his boss behind the Iron Curtain in Budapest to investigate a meeting involving the Hungarian ambassador.
Acting
Dana Andrews smolders with world-weary integrity.
Production
Budapest-by-way-of-Hollywood sets drip with paranoid atmosphere.
Writing
Newspaper banter crackles; third act goes deliciously rogue.
Director
Robert Parrish
Dana Andrews
Jimmy Race
George Sanders
Nicholas Strang
Audrey Totter
Sandy Tate
Märta Torén
Jeanne Moray
Sandro Giglio
Gabor Czeki, alias Grisha
Donald Randolph
Anton Borvitch
Herbert Berghof
Prime Minister Andreas Ordy
Ben Astar
Minister of Justice Vajos
Willis Bouchey
Biddle, an Editor
Jay Adler
Henry (uncredited)
Leon Askin
Franz (uncredited)
Hanna Axmann-Rezzori
Miss Oster (uncredited)
Paul Birch
Colonel Mannix (uncredited)
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Robert Parrish, who edited Citizen Kane, made his directorial debut here—notice the shadowy compositions he learned from Welles.
Shot during the height of McCarthyism, the film's cynicism about American institutions was shockingly subversive for 1952.
US
