Directed by Norman Foster
Written by Joseph Cotten
Starring:
- Joseph Cotten as Howard Graham
- Dolores del Río as Josette Martel
- Ruth Warrick as Mrs. Stephanie Graham
- Agnes Moorehead as Mrs. Mathews
- Orson Welles as Colonel Haki
Rating: 
Though Orson Welles denied any real authorship, the disparity between his professed modesty and his towering ego leaves room for doubt. Whether he shaped it or not, this 1943 noir—mangled by RKO Radio Pictures—is a notorious debacle. Joseph Cotten plays an engineer pursued by Nazis across cabarets, tramp steamers, and rain-lashed rooftops in Turkey, under the direction of Welles protégé Norman Foster. Despite Karl Struss’s shadow-drenched photography and flashes of baroque bravura, the studio cut is incoherent and fatally compromised. Dolores del Rio entrances in fleeting moments, and Welles camps it up memorably as Colonel Haki—but the wreckage is beyond repair.
