{"id":11804,"date":"2015-02-14T00:01:25","date_gmt":"2015-02-14T06:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/?p=11804"},"modified":"2015-02-12T01:04:12","modified_gmt":"2015-02-12T07:04:12","slug":"dvd-review-mask-dimitrios-1944","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/dvd-review-mask-dimitrios-1944\/","title":{"rendered":"DVD Review: The Mask Of Dimitrios (1944)"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n

In Mask of Dimitros, Cornelius Leyden (Peter Lorre), a Dutch mystery writer becomes intrigued when the body of a notorious criminal named Dimitros (Zachary Scott in his first role) washes up on shore. Leyden begins to trace the sordid career of Dimitros. Along the way, he encounters the mysterious man named Mr. Peters (Sidney Greenstreet) who also has an interest in Dimitros.<\/p>\n

Leyden is a very different from the typical Lorre role. While Leyden\u2019s a mystery writer, prior to seeing Dimitrios, he\u2019s never seen a dead body. He goes through the story with a certain innocence and naivete that makes the character likable.<\/p>\n

Greenstreet is far closer to type with Peters, an experienced criminal with genteel manners. It\u2019d be tempting to view Peters as just another version of the Kasper Gutman character from the Maltese Falcon, but there\u2019s a bit more to Peter than that, which becomes clear as the movie plays out. The film\u2019s best scenes are the ones between Lorre and Greenstreet. The chemistry between the two is superb and every moment with them sharing the screen is a joy.<\/p>\n

Most of the scenes with Zachary Scott were flashbacks to his very active criminal career as a sinister ruthless criminal. Sometimes, it felt these scenes went on too long particularly as the mystery surrounding Mr. Peters became\u00a0far more interesting than recalling that Dimitros was a scoundrel. Still Scott was a great heavy.<\/p>\n

The film was made in 1944 and arguably this would have looked better had it been filed without the restrictions inherent with wartime filmmaking but in the pre or post war eras, but still the movie doesn\u2019t look bad and has some great atmospheric scenes.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t a must-watch film or a classic but it\u2019s certainly a well-made film featuring two of Hollywood\u2019s most memorable actors in roles that are a little out of the ordinary.<\/p>\n

Rating: 4.0 out of 5.0<\/p>\n

If you enjoyed this post, you can have new posts about Detective stories and the golden age of radio and television delivered\u00a0automatically to your Kindle<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

This post contains affiliate links, which means that items purchased from these links may result in a commission being paid to the author of this post at no extra cost to the purchaser<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Mask of Dimitros, Cornelius Leyden (Peter Lorre), a Dutch mystery writer becomes intrigued when the body of a notorious criminal named Dimitros (Zachary Scott in his first role) washes up on shore. Leyden begins to trace the sordid career of Dimitros. Along the way, he encounters the mysterious man named Mr. Peters (Sidney Greenstreet)…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[298,123],"tags":[270,83,85],"class_list":["post-11804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dvd-review","category-golden-age-article","tag-classic-film","tag-peter-lorre","tag-sidney-greenstreet"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pECdK-34o","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11804"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11838,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11804\/revisions\/11838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}