This story is based on the report of the Royal Commission, June 27, 1946, and evidence presented in Canadian Courts that resulted in the conviction of ten secret agents of the Soviet Government. The messages and other documents quoted and seen in the film are exactly the same as those presented as exhibits in the trials of the accused agents.
oOo
An odd movie, even for one of the first in that dour, hysterical sub-genre, the Cold War picture, it gains a kind of rough hewn poetic power by stopping to examine the bleak prospects for one man in a gray post-war world.
If you expect a rousing adventure tale from Wellman, think again. What made this film quite moving was the director’s refusal to exaggerate the inherent dramatic qualities in the story and kept it on a human scale, not a geopolitical one. He chose to mute the details of what hyperventilating posters screamed was “the most amazing plot in 3300 years of recorded espionage!!”
Moira Finnie