British Agent (Brutal Agent) (1934)

Leslie Howard, Kay Francis, William Gargan, Phillip Reed, Irving Pichel ... see more  , Walter Byron , J. Carrol Naish , Ivan Simpson , Halliwell Hobbes , Cesar Romero , Alphonse Ethier , Tenen Holtz , George C. Pearce , Gregory Gaye , Paul Porcasi , Addison Richards , Walter Armitage , Arthur Ayleswofth , Thomas Braidon , Mary Forbes , Winter Hall , Lew Harvey , Olaf Hytten , Frank Lackteen , Doris Lloyd , Frank Reicher , Marina Schubert , Fred Walton , Robert Wilbur

British Agent starred the Hungarian/British actor Leslie Howard in the title role, was directed by full-fledged Hungarian Michael Curtiz, and costarred American leading lady Kay Francis as a Russian s... read more py. Based on the memoirs of R. H. Bruce Lockhart, who had been the unofficial British emissary to the Russian Revolutionary government in 1917, British Agent spends more time on its romantic subplot than in recreating the birth of Bolshevism. Leslie Howard's purpose in this film is to dissuade the Bolsheviks from signing a separate treaty with the World War I German regime. It is obvious to modern-day viewers that Howard is merely looking after Britain's interests and has no concern for the Russians; this was par for the course in a 1930s film, but does not play well with less jingoistic audiences of the 1990s. The most interesting aspect of British Agent is the performance of saturnine Irving Pichel as a young Josef Stalin. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi