Kinski Watch V: The Counterfeit Traitor (George Seaton, 1962)

Eric Erickson, a blacklisted Swedish oil trader during World War II (who, of course, is an American who recently acquired his Swedish citizenship) infiltrates the Nazis as an underground spy for the Allies. Kinski's role in all of this? One minute of screen time right before the end credits roll, one line of dialogue, and a lot of gazing at the distance. He plays a sick Jew who tries to escape to Sweden on a fisherboat and chokes to death on a handkerchief when the boat is searched by the Nazis and he wants to avoid coughing. But even with such a meager outcome for the Kinski spotter, The Counterfeit Traitor offers a number of delicacies that entertain the viewer quiet a bit.

The main attraction here is the script that is straight forward and doesn't shy away from letting its protagonists suffer. Everyone in the film has some kind of hidden agenda they try to conceal from others. Who knows what becomes the main concern for everyone involved, as it becomes increasingly clear that the wrong information in the hands of the wrong people could mean being thrown to jail or, worse, being killed. Such is the fate of Marianne, Erickson's passing love interest, who pretends to be dedicated to the Nazi cause and secretly feeds intel to the Allies. In one very strong scene, she tells Erickson how hard it is to do so. The information she collects is used to bomb factories and important infrastructure, but what we now call collateral damage is inevitable, and she cites the case of a school being bombed as a result of her covert activities. As soon as she says that, the air raid alarm goes off and Erickson whisks her away to a bomb shelter, where she experiences the consequences of her own actions, and Erickson realizes what it can mean to cooperate with the Allies.

Other scenes are a too mechanical to be convincing, for instance when Baron von Oldernburg, a German Erickson blackmails to cooperate with him, witnesses how polish workers at a refinery are hanged because they protest against the inhuman work conditions, and suddenly declares that he will now work for the Allies because he is fully convinced to do the right thing. But in general, the film does a great job to convey the paranoid atmosphere of World War II Germany where everyone is fair game to the Gestapo, and people who work against the regime face death at every turn. Director George Seaton films it with an unfussy camera. The mise en scene is rather unpretentious, which allows us to fully concentrate on the suspenseful story.