Sorry, this movie sucks

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Directorial Debut for Jules Dassin and it Shows a Talent in the Rough as the Film has Flourishes that Enhance its Low Budget. It has Style. Conrad Veidt is Excellent in what Starts Out as a Dual Role.The Film was Made Early in the Turmoil of the Beginning of WWII and as such was Able to Show a Sympathetic German. The Implausibility of the Story is a Suspension of Disbelief but Nevertheless it is Intriguing and Suspenseful with Good Performances All Around.An MGM B-Movie with Class. Dassin would Dismiss All of His MGM Output in Later Years. Worth a Watch because of the Director and Veidt and for an Early Hollywood Effort to Rally the Citizenry.

Conrad Veidt plays two roles here, as a self-assured Nazi and a mild-mannered Ally. The brothers confront each other and the Nazi is murdered, but now the surviving brother must impersonate the Nazi in order to deflect attention from his crime and also to gather information that can help the Allies.This is an intense movie to watch, and thanks to being made by MGM it is very polished. I saw it screened at Cinevent in 2013 and remember it vividly a year later. Conrad Veidt could have ruined the movie if he were a lesser actor, but he handles both parts remarkable and never gives the audience a reason to doubt him.

After fleeing to the United States because of the repressive Nazi government in Germany, Conrad Veidt made quite a career for himself playing evil Nazis in American propaganda films dedicated to boosting support for the war effort. In this case, however, Veidt plays TWO roles! And, the film goes a direction I never had anticipated.The film begins with Veidt working for the German consulate in America as a leader of a unit of spies. He has a brother who's lived in the US for several years because this brother hates the Nazis. Surprisingly, the nice Veidt gets a visit from his evil twin with the consulate--and it's to blackmail the nice one into working for the Nazis. This continues for a bit, but when the evil Veidt pushes too far, his patriotic and America-loving twin kills him--and assumes his identity in order to undermine the Reich's efforts to destroy America. Where all this goes next, you'll need to see for yourself--but it was surprisingly sentimental and understated. Well made and interesting compared to the average propaganda film--and made a bit better since Veidt was such an excellent actor. Worth seeing.

In 1926 Veidt made another film in which he played a good brother and a bad brother--The Brothers Schellenberg. They both came from an educated but penniless class; the good brother founded a commune and the bad one was a ruthless, social-climbing capitalist. The good brother, as I recall, had a beard and wore rumpled clothes, while the bad one was clean-shaven and and had an elegant wardrobe of evening clothes.... In Nazi Agent, the two brothers have similar physical distinctiveness but now they of the landowning class: the gentle academic driven from Germany by the Nazi aversion to historical truth, and the potently Nazi German Consul in "State City." The twist is that the good brother must disguise himself as the bad brother in order to make his contribution to the anti-Nazi effort by breaking up a nest of spies. It seems to me that the twin-substitution plot usually involves women, not men--with the notable exception of Dead Ringers...? Veidt gets to do what Jeremy Irons did, play twin A pretending to be twin B in such a way that the audience, but not twin B's associates, sees the difference. Even old Fritz, who has known the twins from childhood, recognizes Otto by a scar, not by his manners.The film seems to have been made before Pearl Harbor and released afterwards; in the world it depicts, Canada has joined the war but the U.S. is still on somewhat friendly terms with Germany.Another viewer commented that Veidt is not sexually attractive. Hmm. I think that the character he plays in this film is not supposed to be very sexually aggressive--the big romantic scene does not even involve a kiss, and the bookseller twin has been up to this time someone who is more interested in rare stamps than in women. But one might check out his two films for Michael Powell, or Escape, or A Woman's Face, in all of which his character is supposed to be, and is, extremely sexually attractive. It is interesting that in both Escape and A Woman's Face he at first appears as sexy and charming, in different ways, a real Prince Charming for the very different heroines of the two films. Then, towards the end of the films, he reveals himself for the ruthless Nazi he is, showing extreme cruelty of various kinds.So although Veidt could turn on and off the sexiness and otherwise vary his characters, he made three films in this period in which he is the good German (OK, Scandinavian in A Woman's Face) and the bad Nazi: Escape, A Woman's Face, and Nazi Agent. By this time, I believe, he was a British citizen, contributing generously to the war effort, but it's interesting that he was not playing The Hun who tosses babies out the window, as Von Stroheim did during WWI, but two men, one who loves music and women and knowledge, the other who sees Nazism as the only path to success and riches, and who has been utterly corrupted by it.