#THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS SERIES#

The film features Sydney Greenstreet, Zachary Scott (as Dimitrios Makropoulos), Faye Emerson and Peter Lorre. And Victor Francen, Steven Geray and Faye Emmerson are good in minor roles.This sort of worldly melodrama calls for refinement in cinematic style, but the writing and direction of this picture betray a rather clumsy, conventional approach. The Mask of Dimitrios is a 1944 American film noir directed by Jean Negulesco and written by Frank Gruber, based on the 1939 novel of the same title written by Eric Ambler (in the United States, it was published as A Coffin for Dimitrios). As the object of every one's attention, Zachary Scott, who makes his debut in this film, presents the rascally Dimitrios as a blue-steel American gangster type.

#THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS SERIES#

Peter Lorre plays the writer-not very effectively, be it said, for the role calls for humored insouciance, which he does not give to it-and Sydney Greenstreet plays a mysterious meddler in his archly pontifical style. In the late thirties and early forties, Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre starred in a series of exceptional mystery films. And they have run in a cast of old familiars to play assorted conspirators and muggs. Seldom has this reviewer waited so patiently-and in vain-to be surprised.To be sure, the Warner schemists have poured some scabby atmosphere into this film and have been very liberal with the scenery in picturing international haunts and Balkan dives. And the mystery built up around the research into his past is just plain dust in your eyes. This Dimitrios scoundrel, whom the writer seems to think such a fascinating rogue, is never proved to be much more than a vermin with a record that is cheap and banal. When they dropped the coffin out of the title they dropped a lot that went with it out of the film.In telling the picaresque story of a mystery writer on the trail of a Levantine bum whose career of crime in the Balkans has stimulated the writer's awe, the film wallows deeply in discourse and tediously trite flashbacks. But, unfortunately, this screen adaptation is no great credit to either accessory to the act. Ambler writes and the latter's 'A Coffin for Dimitrios,' peg for this picture, was a pip of a book, we hear. For the Warners are proved masters of such grisly tales as Mr. One might be excused for expecting the combination of Warner Brothers and an Eric Ambler yarn to result in something somewhat more exciting in the mystery thriller line than the film called 'The Mask of Dimitrios,' which came to the Strand yesterday.

The mask of dimitrios