Journey Into Fear

'Designed' rather than directed by Welles, though you wouldn't care to bet on it as things get under way with the camera craning up to a sleazy window in Istanbul and peering in - as a tinny gramophone with a stuck needle maddeningly grinds out the same phrase - for its first glimpse of the slug-like babyfaced killer played (brilliantly) by Jack Moss. Thereafter, with Cotten on the run from Gestapo agents and Welles having fun in the first of his monster roles as the Turkish chief of secret police (he directed all his own scenes), the tone veers through nightmare chases, bizarre encounters, and deflating jokes. Eminently watchable, but it does tail away.