The Adventures of Tartu

Plot synopsis:
In 1940, demolition expert Captain Terrence Stevenson, an Englishman born in Romania and educated in Germany, is summoned to the Foreign Office. Because Stevenson knows both Romanian and German fluently, he is asked to go on a mission disguised as Romanian chemical engineer Jan Tartu and destroy a poison gas factory in Czechoslovakia. After parachuting into Romania, "Tartu," dressed as a dandy and assuming the air of a gigolo, travels toward Czechoslovakia, pretending to be sympathetic to Germany and wanted by the Romanian people because of it. Arriving in Czechoslavakia, Tartu stops at the shop of his contact, a shoemaker. Before putting Tartu in touch with the underground, the shoemaker is arrested in a Gestapo raid, but Tartu escapes. Wearing a German uniform, Tartu then goes to work at a war materiel plant and is told to keep his eyes open for Czechs who try to stop production. At his hotel, he encounters Marúschka Brunn, a formerly wealthy Czech who fraternizes with the Germans and flaunts her distaste of her own people. One day, a woman is shot for sabotage at the plant and landlady Anna Palacek's daughter Pavla, who works at the plant, arrives at home very upset. When German officers arrive to investigate the death of a fellow officer, Tartu gives her an alibi and hides a gun for her. Pavla and Anna now say that they will do anyting for him and he reveals that he must contact the underground to fulfill a secret mission. A short time later, Marúschka asks to see him and he invites her for dinner at a nightclub. They begin to realize their mutual attraction, and, as he gets to know Marúschka, Tartu deduces that she is really anti-Nazi. In the restaurant's garden, each decides to take a chance on the other. She tells him that she works with Pavla in the underground and will put him in touch with her compatriots. The next day, Pavla is caught in an act of sabotage. Because the Gestapo know that Tartu has seen it, Pavla secretly implores him to save himself and give her away. To fulfill his mission, Tartu does so, and she is shot. Meanwhile, Marúschka goes to the underground council and tells them about Tartu, but when they inform her about what happened to the shoemaker and Pavla, she concludes that he is really a Nazi. They then order her to "eliminate" him. After talking with Anna, Marúschka decides that "one Nazi should get rid of the other." She goes to Inspector Otto Heidrich, a Nazi admirer staying at the hotel, and convinces him that Tartu is a spy. She asks Otto not to call the Gestapo, but to take care of Tartu himself to further his career. They plot to kill Tartu that evening, and she arranges to meet Tartu on the nightclub's terrace. She tells Tartu that she is not a member of the underground, and, as he relates that he is being transferred the next day, Otto prepares to kill him. Just then, however, all officers are ordered to review everyone's papers, and when a young man is killed escaping, Otto's plan is interrupted. In the morning, Tartu reports to the poison gas works and is told that he must memorize the gas's secret formula quickly because the gas will be shipped in two weeks. That night, he goes to a bar and, pretending to be roaring drunk, boasts of his knowledge of the underground. When he leaves, members of the underground follow him, knock him out and take him away. When he comes to, he tries to convince them that he is a British agent, even when they say that they are actually the Gestapo. After they realize that Tartu is telling the truth, they offer to help him sabotage the poison gas bombs. To do this, they create very powerful but tiny bombs that Tartu can smuggle into the plant. Next morning, Otto confirms to Marúschka his findings that Tartu is not a Nazi. Now concerned for Tartu's safety, she starts to flirt with Otto and suggest that he delay calling in the Gestapo to keep the credit for exposing Tartu for himself, then knocks him unconscious. With Anna's help, she quickly leaves after realizing that Otto is dead and goes to the gas works and asks to speak with Tartu, coyly pretending to be his girl friend. She warns Tartu, but he says he cannot leave and tells her to inform the underground that he is planting the bombs right away. As he furiously places the bombs, there is an announcement on the loud speaker that exposes him as a spy. After a desperate chase, he is finally able to escape just before the gas works is sealed off and is picked up by the underground as the explosions begin. Because Marúschka has now become a liability, the underground decides to send her away, and she happily escapes with Tartu in a stolen Nazi airplane.

Tags: murder

Review:
The versatile Robert Donat is Captain Terrence Stevenson a.k.a. Jan Tartu, a British spy well versed in Russian and Rumanian that is assigned to aid Czech partisans in destroying a poison gas factory operated by Nazis.
A good-sized budget, wonderful stars, a good script and excellent direction by Harold Bucquet make for a top-notch British film, "Sabotage Agent," made in 1943 and starring Robert Donat, Valerie Hobson, and Glynis Johns.
Donat plays a British soldier sent to destroy a poison gas the Nazis are making in Czechoslovakia.
There, posing as an Iron Guard member, Jan Tartu, he draws attention to himself as a loud dresser and a ladies' man while trying to infiltrate the underground.The severely asthmatic Donat goes all out in this one, playing his Tartu character to the hilt, preening and raising his arm as he says "Heil Hitler" every other minute, it seems.
Glynis Johns plays a young girl who lives with her mother in the conscripted house, but she also works in the factory where "Tartu" is assigned as a guard.
This propaganda film pits a British-born, German-educated, chemical engineer (Stevnson - Robert Donat) who speaks Rumanian, German and Russian fluently against Nazis in Eastern Europe.
Captain Stevenson becomes an Iron Guard named Tartu (the real Tartu is dead) and heads off, with minimal briefing and no espionage experience, to upset a Nazi plot.
Donat, Glynnis Johns and Valerie Hobson are especially good.
Here, however, he is in fact a man of action, two-fisted and able to handle a pistol as well, sort of a James Bond-type character.He gets good back-up acting support from some dependable character actors and shares billing with lovely Valerie Hobson, who seldom gave a bad performance, and with whom there is apparent chemistry, the kind that two pros can generate.
Donat's army captain gets drafted to impersonate a German-speaking Rumaninan dandy, to infiltrate and destroy a German poison gas camp in Czechoslovakia.
This extremely well-paced 1943 spy film shot in England during the Second World was directed for MGM by British-born Harold S.
If the film has a weakness it is the performance of that wooden English rose, the beautiful Valerie Hobson,(Mrs.Profumo in life) whose not quite up to Donat's delightful mix of romance and melodramatics..
Robert Donat gives a very spirited performance as a British spy fluent in languages who is assigned to sabotage a Nazi gas factory in Czechoslovakia.
He's more action-oriented than usual in a role requiring a lot of physical action while keeping one step ahead of the Nazis.His spying activities also include some romantic moments with lovely Valerie Hobson, a woman who openly flirts with Nazi officers while working with the Czech underground.
Especially good are Walter Rilla as an officer in love with Hobson and Glynis Johns in a small role as an ill-fated Czech loyalist.Highly recommended as one of the best espionage yarns from the U.K. during the war years..
"Sabotage Agent", also known as "Adventures of Tartu", is a first-rate British spy thriller.
It is a quick and entertaining movie about a British spy, whose mission is to destroy the poison gas factory in Rumania.
Robert Donat is very good as the British spy who poses as a Greek and a Rumanian.
Never seen Walter Rilla before or since, but he gave a good performance as the German officer, Otto, who is one of the villains, who loves Ms. Hobson's character..
Robert Donat's Eastern European background and fluency in a few languages make him the ideal choice for British Secret Service to send on a mission to destroy a Nazi poison gas factory in occupied Czechoslovakia.
In a brief prologue with Donat disarming a buzz bomb that landed in a hospital, we see an example of how he keeps his cool under fire.Sabotage Agent next has Donat in Czechoslovakia disguised as a refugee from the Nazi sympathizing Iron Guard of Romania.
Donat moves effortlessly from the stiff upper lip British agent to the bumptious Jan Tartu of Romania.
Another agent is Valerie Hobson who like Donat is always good.
This was more like something from James Bond.Nevertheless Donat and Hobson give good characterizations and also Glynis Johns as another Czech patriot gives a memorable performance..
Sabotage Agent - a Super Action Film of the WWII Era. My first hint that this movie was great was an early scene between Robert Donat and the actress who plays his mother, Mabel Terry-Lewis.
Donat plays each of his secret identities with a confident, warm-hearted air.I usually hate chase scenes but the only one in this film was truly exciting.TCM advertised this movie as Sabotage Agent, so keep an eye out for it under that title.
"The Adventures of Tartu" has a fine opening scene, quickly establishing Robert Donat as a cool and collected expert in defusing bomb which hadn't exploded in one of the Nazi's blitzes of London.
Donat essayed a similar role in "Knight Without Armour" (1937) in which he was a British spy posing as a Russian revolutionary during and after WWI, but that film was far superior on every level to this one.
Still, any film with Donat is interesting at the very least, and "Tartu" is fairly good.Thus far (as of 2013) a very clear print of this motion picture hasn't surfaced, but perhaps Criterion will restore/release one in the future, should the British Film Institute or some such other organisation have a good transfer from the original negative on hand..
"Sabotage Agent" (aka, The Adventures of Tartu) is an excellent WWII action film.
It then moves into an espionage and spy thriller, and gives a very good account of the underground that operated in Nazi-occupied countries.
It was a much more involved thriller with Robert Donat as a British Officer who goes to Romania to hopefully destroy the latest in Nazi poison gas.
Unlike Saddam Hussein, the Nazis really did have WMDs and the release of a gas like this could have turned the war.Donat is best remembered for his Academy Award winning performance in Goodbye Mr. Chips.
She was a "stand by your man" wife and gave up acting to work with the developmentally disabled.She gave an excellent performance as someone who openly flirted with the Nazi's, but was actually a member of the underground..
During WW2, Robert Donat (Tartu) is selected to act as a British agent with the mission to blow up a factory that is making poisonous gas for the Nazis in Czechoslovakia.
Valerie Hobson (Lanova) plays a Nazi sympathiser who is lodging at the same house as Donat but is she what she seems?
Factory worker Glynis Johns (Paula) is also at the house.The film has a story that keeps you watching and at the end it turns into a bit of a James Bond adventure as Donat has to do some pretty miraculous things all in the name of action sequences.
This film pits a chemical engineer (Captain Stevenson) who is fluent in Rumanian, German and Russian against Nazis.
Stevenson becomes an Iron Guard named Tartu and attempts to upset a Nazi plot by destroying a poison gas factory.
Robert Donat had gotten into film when talkies began, and won the oscar for "Goodbye Mr. Chips".
Lively, Well Produced British War Time Spy-Thriller.
With a Bigger Budget than usual, this Movie Stars Popular and Charming Actor Robert Donat on a Mission to Destroy a Nazi Chemical Weapons Plant...Single Handedly.Donat, Turns it Up, maybe a notch too much sometimes, as an Effeminate Flake of an Engineer with Wild Gestures and Over Emoting.
For this reason, instead of a team of well-trained saboteurs going in to execute the mission, a single tri-lingual army captain (Robert Donat) is parachuted in and has to make contact with "the Underground" in order to carry out what would be a huge, complicated mission in real life.
They sound quite interesting together on screen.Donat spends most of this WW2 drama wearing a Nazi uniform and saying things like 'Heil Hitler'.
We see some brief stock footage of the actual Blitz, with London in flames; unfortunately, this dose of reality contrasts sharply with the fictional sequences that follow.Donat is soon conscripted to go undercover in Czechoslovakia, using the identity of a dead man named Jan Tartu.
Donat's mission is to make contact with the Czech resistance and blow up a Nazi chemical factory.
Donat continues his Nazi act when another resistance agent (a haggard middle-aged woman) is arrested.
But the third time the Nazis try to bounce a Czech, the resistance agent is an attractive young woman ...
so *this* time, for some reason, Donat endangers himself and his mission to save her.Valerie Hobson, whom I've always liked, is cast as a Czech woman who appears to support the Nazi cause but who is actively involved in the resistance.
Despite a relatively small film output (roughly 25 movies I believe) Donat showed a wide variety of different parts, including comedy, historical, character studies, spy films (including THE 39 STEPS for Hitchcock), and straight drama.
Fans of GONE WITH THE WIND may have cause to grumble (forgetting Gable already won the Oscar as "Peter Warne" in IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT) but fans of Donat (and they included Walter Matthau, who said he was his favorite actor) have never complained.SABOTAGE AGENT is known in the U.S. as THE ADVENTURES OF TARTU.
"Jan Tartu" is the false identity name given to Donat's character Captain Terence Stevenson when he is sent on a mission into Czechoslovakia during World War II.
The ADVENTURES OF STEVENSON would have been less misleading on this point, but people might have thought that it referred to the author of TREASURE ISLAND.Stevenson, a linguist, has been on home watch duty, but is selected for the mission due to his grasp on central European languages, specifically, Czech, Roumanian, and German (a neat trick, by the way, as these are from three separate language groups: Slavic, Latin, and Germanic - Stevenson must have been like my father, a real super expert on foreign tongues).
Of course the partisan escapes while the Nazis are forced to see "Tartu" pounding on a wall as though he is doing something remarkably clever.The mission is to find the secret factory where a deadly new gas is being manufactured (this is a running theme in many films of the 1930s and 1940s - a secret poison gas that some country is manufacturing to use on the battlefield: memories of the battles of World War I prevented people from considering poison gas used on civilian prisoners for "ethnic cleansing" purposes).
With the assistance of Glynis Johns and Valerie Hobson Donat does find the factory, cleverly hidden within a mountain.
Now the problem is to destroy it, which leads to an exciting conclusion within the factory within the mountain.Unusual for most Donat films (only KNIGHT WITHOUT ARMOUR has as much daring-do involving Donat and co-star Marlene Dietrich fleeing the Bolsheviks in 1919) THE ADVENTURES OF TARTU is a good escapist film.
The performances are good, with Johns quite moving as she sacrifices herself for Donat's mission, and Hobson being forced to descend to murder to help as well.
When the film begins, Robert Donat is a bomb disposal expert working during the Blitz.
Despite this stupid plot element, the rest of the film is pretty interesting--especially when the Underground decides he is a Nazi and mark him for death!
I was actually very surprised that the British film industry had such sets or had access to a factory like this--it was huge and impressive.
While far from Robert Donat's best, it's a solid WWII propaganda movie from start to finish..
The Adventures of Tartu aka Sabotage Agent is a cut above the mass produced war movies of the 40s.
Soon enough he's off to try to contact the Czech underground, disguised as one Jan Tartu, a now deceased Romanian Iron Guard member.
You go from moment to moment wondering who is for the good and who is for evil, even when in reality you know.Robert Donat is marvelous here as the English chemist who goes to Czechoslovakia to destroy a Nazi based gas plant.
Go know that she is really working for the Czech anti-Nazi underground.Glynis Johns appears briefly as the young lady who attempts sabotage in the film and then condemns herself to death as she realizes that Donat saw her do this and that he would blow his cover if he said otherwise.Exciting with a host of Nazi characters, one worse than the other..
***SPOILERS*** With the British Foreign Office getting wind of a plot by the evil Nazis developing this new strain of poison gas that's 1,000 times more powerful then mustard & chlorine they decide to go into action to stop them.
It's decided to parachute drop British bomb defusing expert and part time chemical engineer Terry Stevenson played by Robert Donat, who's been rumored to be the hair to the "Dunkin Donut" fast food empire, being dropped into Nazi occupied Czechoslavakia where the Nazis are secretly developing the deadly gas.Taking the identity, with false papers provided to him by the British Foreign Office, of deceased Romanian chemical engineer and army officer Jan Tartu Stevenson gets a job at the Czech Skoda works or factory where the poison gas is being developed.
While staying in Czechoslavakia at the Palacek residence Stevenson using the name Jan Tartu then tries to get in contract the the Czech Underground, a group of real bad dudes, to help him sabotage the Nazis attempt to make the gas.
And even worse Tartu gets romantically involved with Nazi loving Maruschka Brunn, no relation to Eva, played by Valerie Hobson who if she finds out who he really is and what he's up to, destroy her beloved Nazis plans to developing the super poison gas, can blow his and the British Foreign Offices plans of stopping them out of the water!***SPOILERS*** As it later turns out the Nazi loving Maruschka is really working for the take no BS, from the Nazis and anyone else, Czech Underground and using her both beauty and charms to get vital information from the Nazi high Command, who are falling all over themselves to get a date with her, to relay back to them as well, by short wave radio, the allies.
It takes a while for Tartu to convince the bad a** Czech Underground that he's the real deal a British secret agent not a die in the wool Nazi for them to go along with him on his mission.
That's to blow up the Skoda Works Factory with everyone in it the Nazis and even the slave Czech worker, which considering the circumstances was a small price to pay, to keep the deadly gas from being developed and later used against the allied forces fighting a life and death struggle against Hitler's Germany.
*Spoiler/plot- 1943, A British Army native Romanian chemist is sent into learn about and destroy a Natzi poison gas and its factory plant.
He assumes the identity of a Romanian Natzi officer and with the help of the Czech underground is successful.*Special Stars- Robert Donat, Glynis Johns *Theme- Natzism must be stopped by brave men and women of the world.*Trivia/location/goofs- British, Watch for a very young new actress, Glynis Johns as a munitions worker sabotage agent.*Emotion- An rather enjoyable WW2 spy film with all the intrigue and suspense of a mystery novel.
While full scale efforts against Germany in Norway, Greece and France were full scale disasters, the notion in propaganda films was that one man could wreak almighty justice upon the Nazi monster.In SABOTAGE AGENT aka ADVENTURES OF TARTU, the slight and sickly Robert Donat is gotten up as a master war hero.
It is Donat's mission to blow up the factory before they can ship the gas which he does escaping with his new girlfriend and assorted helpers and contacts in a stolen JU-88 .Its been said that when Goebbels saw British propaganda he was so thrilled that it was so crude because that meant German propaganda was so superior.
Robert Donat is a British chemist sent into Rumania, through Germany, into Czechoslovakia to sabotage a huge industrial plant where the Nazis are manufacturing vast amounts of poison gas.
But Donat succeeds in his mission, blows the plant to smithereens, and makes a suspenseful escape with Hobson and a few other patriots in a Junkers 88.For such a complicated yet slight tale, the story generates a good deal of suspense.
aka Tartu (1943) aka Sabotage Agent (1943)Directed by Harold Bucquet, with a story by John Higgins and a screenplay by John Lee Mahin and Howard Emmett Rogers, this slightly above average espionage thriller was the first film MGM Studios was able to get Robert Donat to agree to do after his Oscar winning performance in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939); he had a right of refusal clause in his contract.As British Captain Terence Stevenson, who defuses a bomb in a partially collapsed London hospital during World War II, Donat's character is asked to assume the identity of Romanian chemist Jan Tartu in order to infiltrate and destroy a German poison gas factory hidden in Prague, Czechoslovakia.
As Tartu, he pretends to be a dandy that wants to serve der Fuhrer (Adolf Hitler), but must make contact with the Czech resistance while avoiding detection and capture by the Nazis for whom he'll work.
Valerie Hobson, Walter Rilla, Glynis Johns, Phyllis Morris, and Martin Miller are among those who also appear in key roles.When the only contact Tartu knows is captured, and later killed, right after they'd met, he must find a way to find and get help from the Czech resistance without alerting Nazi Inspector Otto Vogel (Rilla) and the other Germans.
In the meantime, careless Paula is caught trying to sabotage some of the artillery shells by another Nazi officer right while Tartu is nearby.Quick on his feet, Tartu decides to go straight to the plant's manager with a cover story that he'd been making friends with some of the Czech's to infiltrate their resistance.