Transit

Rating: 10/10 (8 November 1999)

I can't see this one often enough. Besides bringing back the team that made The Maltese Falcon and adding the unbelievable Ingrid Bergman at her most beautiful, Claude Raines as just the perfect corrupt slimeball bureaucrat Frenchy trading visas for sex with the cute wives of refugees and Conrad Viedt at his best creating the character upon which Colonel Klink was undoubtedly based. Peter Lorre as a pathetic loser, Sidney Greenstreet is still "The Fat Man" and Bogey is still the hard boiled realist. The difference to the MF is that instead of a Dashiel Hammet derivative detective story, this one is based on themes from what was the classic story of the early years of Nazi history - the transit visa. That was the holy grail that meant survival to millions who fled between 1932 and when the borders closed shortly after the fall of Paris. From this perspective, Ricks actions can be seen not so much as noble self denial but the hard reality that in such times the problems of two lovers "don't amount to a hill of beans."