- Nobody in Jean Negulesco's The Mask of Dimitrios seems terribly upset that prolific criminal Dimitrios Makropoulos (Zachary Scott) is dead. The enthusiastic Turkish Colonel Haki (Kurt Katch) describes Dimitrios as a real-life version of those crime novel villains he loves reading about, which is why he urges a mystery writer named Leyden (Peter Lorre) to dig further into Dimitrios' life. As Leyden soon discovers, Dimitrios had a habit of promising money to girlfriends (Faye Emerson) and criminal accomplices (Sydney Greenstreet, Victor Francen, Steven Geray) alike, but he never developed the habit of delivering on those promises. Now, all that is left of Dimitrios is his body, which was found stabbed to death on the shores of the Bosporus strait.
- Regarding that body, Leyden finds it quite odd that presumptuous men like Peters (Greenstreet) and Grodek (Francen) warm up to him considerably upon finding out that Leyden actually saw Dimitrios' body. Sure, Dimitrios had plenty of enemies, but why would anybody offer Leyden so much money just to make a positive identification of the body? Maybe the answer has to do with Dimitrios' dabbling in political assassination and espionage, but the film's many flashbacks only convince us that Dimitrios was not a man to be trusted before his untimely death. Come to think of it, none of those flashbacks actually show him getting stabbed, do they?
- While the plotting in The Mask of Dimitrios is nothing too revolutionary or surprising, the film is very enjoyable as a vehicle for its excellent cast of character actors including Lorre, Greenstreet, Francen, Geray, and Katch. In fact, the supporting cast vastly outshines the nominal romantic leads, Scott and Emerson, who are adequate at best. The film's direction is surprisingly good, considering that Negulesco is not exactly a household name, and the cinematography by Arthur Edeson is nearly as impressive as his better-known work on The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. If you're just watching for Lorre and Greenstreet, at least The Mask of Dimitrios has the courtesy of not distracting its audience with bigger names than theirs.
- Adapted from a novel by Eric Ambler.
