Taking his cue from Hitchcock's recent success THE LADY VANISHES, Carol Reed borrowed both that film's writers (Sidney Gilliat, Frank Launder) and its low-key comic duo (Basil Radford, Naunton Wayne) to concoct this witty, vastly entertaining spy thriller. As a result of the imminent threat of the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Nazi troops, Dr. Axel Bomasch (James Harcourt), the inventor of a new technique for armor-plating artillery, escapes to England while his daughter Anna (Margaret Lockwood) is captured and sent to a concentration camp. Although she escapes from the camp and rejoins her father, the Nazis kidnap the Czech pair and take them back to Germany. British agent Gus Bennett (Rex Harrison), who has already displayed an amusing gift for disguise, now makes use of it by infiltrating the German high-command in an effort to save the Bomasches. The film barrels to its finish in a dizzying array of twists and turns, with a still-astonishing cable-car escape in the Swiss Alps. Between the pre-Bond insouciance of the young Harrison, the deadpan exchanges of Radford and Wayne, the overall intelligence of the script, and the steady hand of Carol Reed, this film raises the genre to a very high level.