This film is generally regarded as the beginning of Veronica Lake's decline from major stardom. She plays an Austrian refugee living in an English stately home at the beginning of the war. The pacifist son of the family, played extremely well by Franchot Tone, falls for her unaware that she is really a Nazi spy trying to find out the location of a secret airfield in the vicinity. Veronica manages the accent quite well but her performance is flat and lacking in energy. To be fair she doesn't get much assistance from the script which seems unsure how to treat her character. It doesn't help that there is no chemistry between her and Tone and that her famous hairstyle (apart from one brief scene) is rigidly knotted for most of the film. Binnie Barnes is downright irritating as an ex-actress who has married in to the aristocracy. Her response to an air raid is to rush and put on her make-up before leading everyone in a rousing chorus of 'Roll Out The Barrel'! It's extremely slow only comes to life in the last 10 minutes with Veronica unmasked and murdered by Tone. The 75 minute running time is unusually short for a Paramount A feature with several key scenes including the round up of the spy ring and Veronica's death not shown on screen. Evidence of post production tampering perhaps?
Review of The Hour Before the Dawn
