Night Train to Munich (1940)

Rex Harrison, Margaret Lockwood, Paul Henreid

Directed by Carol Reed

Available to stream on YouTube

Our next film is a British spy drama featuring young Rex Harrison as a British agent. In this wartime thriller, handsome young Rex Harrison rescues beautiful Margaret Lockwood and her scientist father from the clutches of the Nazis in 1940.

Margaret Lockwood and Rex Harrison in "Night Train to Munich"

Why we love it: This is a fantastic spy drama -- full of intrigue, romance, and even a little humor. The film begins with Nazi aggression and a bleak concentration camp, but the tone lightens when Harrison makes fools of the treacherous Nazis. As Slant Magazine said in 2017: “Come for Carol Reed’s name (he directed The Third Man), stay for Rex Harrison’s performance and a few good cheap shots at the Nazis.”

Rex Harrison in "Night Train to Munich"

Fun facts:

• The film is very similar to Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes, with a lot of the action occurring on a train. The screenplay was written by the same writing team, Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, and features some of the same stars -- Margaret Lockwood as the female lead and Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne reprising their roles as the comic duo Charters and Caldecott. In The Lady Vanishes (1938), the bad guys couldn't be called Nazis because the war hadn't started yet, but in 1940 England was at war with Germany and producer Edward Black wanted to "remake" The Lady Vanishes as a clear anti-Nazi picture.

Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne as Charters and Caldicott in "Night Train to Munich"

• Director Carol Reed was set to direct this movie in 1939 when war broke out and all filming stopped. Studios were closed down and requisitioned by the government for other uses. Producer Edward Black went to the Board of Trade and argued successfully that movies were necessary for morale and were helpful to the war effort. The studios opened again and this film was one of the first anti-Nazi British war movies.

• Originally titled "Night Train to Munich" in Britain, the film was released under the title "Night Train" in the US.

• Paul Henreid was Austrian and had appeared in German and Austrian films in the 1930's before moving to England because of his anti-Nazi sentiments. In this film he is billed as Paul von Hernreid.

Paul Henreid in "Night Train to Munich"

For a review of the film from the time, go to the Fan Magazine Reviews page.

Featured Cocktail:

Gin Sour

Sours are among the earliest cocktails and may be based on just about any spirit. The most basic versions consist of three ingredients: liquor, citrus, and sugar. The trick is to achieve the right balance between the ingredients.

British sailors made sours—particularly rum sours—popular. When Britain acquired colonies in sugar producing areas, notably Caribbean islands, the navy replaced sailors’ daily ration of wine or beer with rum, which is distilled from sugar. Rum didn’t spoil like beer or wine and, because its alcohol content is higher, ships could be provisioned with less of it. Mixing the rum with citrus, which the ships carried to help combat scurvy, and sugar yielded the sailors’ drink of choice. Inevitably, they brought the idea home with them to Britain. It was soon realized that any citrus juice would work and that gin—with which the British were very familiar as it was legal to distill gin at home in the 17th and 18th centuries—was an equally good base.

In the 1940s gin sours were a popular cocktail, often using a recipe like this that calls for less sweet and sour than many modern versions.

½ Tbsp (7.5 ml) sugar syrup

½ oz (15 ml) lemon juice

2 oz (60 ml) gin

Shake all ingredients with ice. Strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with lemon or orange twist.

Cheers to the Classics!