“Counter-Attack” is an interesting movie that takes place some time in 1942 in the basement of a Russian factory that has been sealed tight by shelling. Penned up there together are a Russian paratrooper (Paul Muni), a girl partisan (Marguerite Chapman) and seven Nazis. This situation was created by Janet and Philip Stevenson, who wrote the original play, and it seems an unlikely, canned arrangement that was made with the limitations and demands of the stage much more in mind than those of war. The people are in the basement for three days trying to outwit one another: the Russians are trying to maintain their position as captors and to get important information from their prisoners, while the Nazis are trying to get important information from the Russians and also to talk themselves out of being prisoners. After three days the group is rescued by a Russian battalion which reaches the town by an under-river bridge and is led to the basement by the hero’s faithful dog. Building the bridge and the dog’s part of the movie have the quality of the Rover Boys, but the basement section is engrossing. It is taken up mostly with good, unlikely conversations between Muni and the Nazis, and has portraits of Nazis that seem wonderful in comparison to the average movie characterization.
The Nazis are, I think, too voluble and extroverted as prisoners, and too comic and light to be studied seriously as Nazis, but they are acted with enormous enthusiasm, are well photographed and are shown generally in an unhackneyed way. The one called the “Professor” seemed to me a subtle combination of buffoonery, sharp-wittedness and excessive cruelty; the “Magician” seemed remarkable for having a genuine middle-class nature and the right degree of above-average—but not too far above—bravery, independence and wit; the officer is acted neatly for elfin cunning and superciliousness. The characterization of the paratrooper is less original and less satisfactory, and Muni’s acting, which aims at boyishness and a Russian quality, is in a heavy, emphatic style that could be studied in detail from any distance up to a mile. For a number of reasons the action in the basement has a lot of the quality of a high-school sports event. There is practically no ugliness, obtuseness or lack of communication; the three days are taken up with closely contested talking scrimmages carried on as though there were rooters and sidelines; the Germans occasionally go into decorative huddles; there is one stratagem in which the Russian gives a Nazi an unloaded gun that reminded me of certain faking maneuvers in football, and the one time that a German’s request for a scrimmage is refused by the Russian it seems very unsportsmanlike of him.
Due in about equal parts to John Howard Lawson’s script, James Wong Howe’s photography of the Nazis—which is for once dry rather than silvery—Zoltan Korda’s directing, and one of these persons’ liking for shots in which subjects are arranged in balanced, stark formation, the Nazis are employed with unusual effect, and the film has a good deal of unconventional movie vitality. The Nazis are seldom seen close up or from a point within the group, but are sharply individualized and given a virulent volubility and energy, so that there is constantly a feeling of a group’s cunning, frustrated murderousness and life. The movement of a member away from the group is given grandeur by lighting, and pace and excitement by having the hero fuss over how close a Nazi shall come to ask a question. The following items seem to me ingenious devices for keeping you absorbed: having the magician’s performance of magic a hypnotic, dance-like affair with an insinuating pattern of sound supplied to identify the noise cigarettes make hitting the inside of a helmet as the magician throws them; having Muni deliver his orders in a rhythmic, whip-cracking way; and using with morbid effect comic-opera posturing and gestures.
June 11, 1945