Journey Into Fear
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Journey Into Fear refers to a well-known 1940 spy thriller by Eric Ambler and a 1943 film made on the basis of the book.
The Book
The protagonist is a British engineer travelling back from Turkey, where he had completed high-level technical talks which could help cement a Turkish-British alliance in the recently-started Second World War. By the same token, it is worthwhile for the Nazis to assassinate him and they energetically embark on efforts to do just that.
Most of the plot takes place on board an Italian ship, where the protagonist travels in company with his nemesis - a satanic yet believable German intellectual spymaster, accompanied by a Bulgarian hired killer - and with a rich cast of other characters, such as a Turkish secret agent, a Spanish courtesan and her pimp, and a French couple of which the husband is left-leaning and his wife a staunch reactionary.
As common in Ambler's books, the protagonist is not a professional spy, and is clearly out of his depth. Indeed, the chief Nazi treats him with open contempt, which for much of the book seems amply justified. Yet ultimately the German professional pays dearly for underestimating this amateur - another plot element which was to be repeated in later Ambler books.
"Journey into Fear" also introduced for the first time the character of Colonel Haki (a general in later Ambler books) the dour but basically likeable head of Turkish Security.
The book came to be regarded as a classic among spy thrillers, setting out what became some of the genre's basic conventions and immensely influencing later works including the James Bond series. (In particular the main part of From Russia With Love, like Ambler's book, takes place during days and nights of tense travelling from Turkey to France, with the protagonist in imminent danger of being assassinated; while Fleming's protagonist is a professional, in this book he makes amateurish mistakes.)
Part of the book's lasting charm is its capturing the atmosphere and mindset of the "Phony War" phase during which it was written: France is standing strong and nobody dreams that it would fall within a few months, the Italians are strictly neutral and there is no suggestion that they are about to ally with Germany against Britain, and so on. From the book it seems that Ambler - like many Britishers at the time of writing - expected the war to be more a less a replay of the First World War.
The Film
The 1943 film broadly follows the plot of the book, but the protagonist has been made by the American makers into a United States Navy engineer and his attempts to escape the Nazi forces take place during a trip back to the United States.
The film was directed by Norman Foster, but many have speculated input by director Orson Welles as well. Welles did produce and design the picture and wrote the script with the star, Joseph Cotten. He also appears as an actor in the movie.
In 1975 Daniel Mann remade Journey Into Fear with Sam Waterston and Vincent Price. That film is best remembered today as the first major Hollywood production to be filmed in Vancouver. In 2001 a Vancouver-based artist, Stan Douglas, remade the movie as a film installation with a recombinant soundtrack.
In 2005 an alternate cut of the 1943 film was shown at the Welles film retrospective in Locarno, Switzerland.
Featured cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Joseph Cotten | Howard Graham |
| Dolores del Rio | Josette Martel |
| Orson Welles | Colonel Haki |
| Ruth Warrick | Mrs. Stephanie Graham |
| Agnes Moorehead | Mrs. Mathews |
External links
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