Andre de Toth's most interesting films reveal an understanding of the instability and outright treachery of human relationships.
-- Andrew Sarris
de Toth made five films in his native Hungary before emigrating to America via England at the beginning of WWII. His first film in the U.S. was Passport to Suez for the B-unit at Columbia, an experience that allowed him limited freedom and convinced him to work mostly with smaller, independent producers who allowed him more independence in exchange for limited budgets. Passport to Suez was one of the Lone Wolf B movies from the novels by Louis Joseph Vance; Warren William appeared in ten of them, after starting out as one of the cads of pre-code films in the early thirties. The Lone Wolf was Michael Lanyard, a thief turned private detective.
de Toth quickly sharpened his directing skills with the improbable plot of Passport to Suez, about a Nazi plot to blow up the Suez Canal. The cast included the feisty Ann Savage (later the star of Edgar Ulmer's Detour in 1945) as a femme fatale as well as a somewhat dissipated William, Lloyd Bridges and Sheldon Leonard. de Toth keeps his camera relatively quiet (cinematography by L. William O'Connell), observing the characters taking chances and making decisions for better or worse, a style he refined though a number of impressive genre films, especially Westerns and crime films. My own favorites are Springfield Rifle (1952), Crime Wave (1954) and Day of the Outlaw (1960), all of which have protagonists stuggling with conflicting loyalties.
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