I briefly worked for the Reuters news agency (in a very minor capacity) during the Cold War, so I was curious to see the film 'This Man Reuter', which purports to be a biopic of Paul Julius Reuter. I knew almost nothing about the agency's founder before I saw this film ... and now that I've seen it, I still know almost nothing about him. How much of this movie is true? I get the impression that very little of it is.
The good news first: this is an extremely well-made Warner Brothers 'prestige' picture, expertly directed by the great William Dieterle and splendidly photographed by the legendary James Wong Howe. There are some fine montage sequences (by Don Siegel?), easily up to this studio's standard. (Warners always had the best montages.) There's a good supporting cast, and Edward G Robinson gives conviction and humanity to the leading role. I was even pleased to see a brief appearance by former silent-film comedian George Ovey.
The bad news: in spite of all of the above, I still find myself wondering how much of this actually happened. We see Reuter (Robinson) in the mid-19th century, as a man obsessed with acquiring information and disseminating it as rapidly as possible. He begins by using a telegraph and carrier pigeons to collect the stock-market quotations, selling the information to a cartel of brokers. (Ovey appears during this pigeon sequence.) There's an amusing scene with Gene Lockhart as a broker who schemes to get one jump ahead of his rivals, and who is promptly outsmarted by Robinson. Lockhart was one of those character actors whom audiences liked to see humiliated and outsmarted. (Another such was Walter Catlett.) Lockhart is in good form here, but I suspect that he's portraying a fictional character.
Another fictional character here, surely, is the hero's buddy Max, portrayed by Eddie Albert. I've always liked Albert and regretted that he never really clicked in films: he was typecast as the hero's earnest pal, and hardly got a chance to transcend that niche: he certainly doesn't transcend it here. I suspect that Jack Warner inserted the handsome Albert into this film as an attraction for female movie-goers who mightn't want to look at Edward G Robinson.
SPOILERS COMING NOW. Inevitably, Reuter's empire prospers ... and here comes a climax which I well and truly suspect is Hollywood fiction. It's now April 1865, and there's still no transatlantic telegraph cable to replace the one that broke in 1858. With the Civil War raging in the U.S.A., Reuter has a rival in London who's receiving transatlantic despatches faster than Reuter can get them. Reuter comes up with a Heath Robinson system to shave a few minutes off his rival's time, by dropping messages overboard as ships reach the Irish coast, trusting them to wash ashore and be retrieved, then cabling the gen to London. Will Reuter's method work?
Astoundingly, the very FIRST message that Reuter receives by this method is the assassination of Lincoln. (Which we see in one of the montages.) Is this true? Was the news of Lincoln's assassination indeed Reuter's first transatlantic despatch ... or merely his first major scoop? (Another big scoop -- the end of America's Civil War -- occurred only a few days before Lincoln's assassination, yet we get no mention of that here.) 'This Man Reuter' is a very enjoyable film, of the sort they don't make any more, but it has a strong aroma of Hollywood hokum rather than fact. I wish I knew how much of this movie was accurate. Purely for its entertainment value, I'll rate it 7 out of 10.
The good news first: this is an extremely well-made Warner Brothers 'prestige' picture, expertly directed by the great William Dieterle and splendidly photographed by the legendary James Wong Howe. There are some fine montage sequences (by Don Siegel?), easily up to this studio's standard. (Warners always had the best montages.) There's a good supporting cast, and Edward G Robinson gives conviction and humanity to the leading role. I was even pleased to see a brief appearance by former silent-film comedian George Ovey.
The bad news: in spite of all of the above, I still find myself wondering how much of this actually happened. We see Reuter (Robinson) in the mid-19th century, as a man obsessed with acquiring information and disseminating it as rapidly as possible. He begins by using a telegraph and carrier pigeons to collect the stock-market quotations, selling the information to a cartel of brokers. (Ovey appears during this pigeon sequence.) There's an amusing scene with Gene Lockhart as a broker who schemes to get one jump ahead of his rivals, and who is promptly outsmarted by Robinson. Lockhart was one of those character actors whom audiences liked to see humiliated and outsmarted. (Another such was Walter Catlett.) Lockhart is in good form here, but I suspect that he's portraying a fictional character.
Another fictional character here, surely, is the hero's buddy Max, portrayed by Eddie Albert. I've always liked Albert and regretted that he never really clicked in films: he was typecast as the hero's earnest pal, and hardly got a chance to transcend that niche: he certainly doesn't transcend it here. I suspect that Jack Warner inserted the handsome Albert into this film as an attraction for female movie-goers who mightn't want to look at Edward G Robinson.
SPOILERS COMING NOW. Inevitably, Reuter's empire prospers ... and here comes a climax which I well and truly suspect is Hollywood fiction. It's now April 1865, and there's still no transatlantic telegraph cable to replace the one that broke in 1858. With the Civil War raging in the U.S.A., Reuter has a rival in London who's receiving transatlantic despatches faster than Reuter can get them. Reuter comes up with a Heath Robinson system to shave a few minutes off his rival's time, by dropping messages overboard as ships reach the Irish coast, trusting them to wash ashore and be retrieved, then cabling the gen to London. Will Reuter's method work?
Astoundingly, the very FIRST message that Reuter receives by this method is the assassination of Lincoln. (Which we see in one of the montages.) Is this true? Was the news of Lincoln's assassination indeed Reuter's first transatlantic despatch ... or merely his first major scoop? (Another big scoop -- the end of America's Civil War -- occurred only a few days before Lincoln's assassination, yet we get no mention of that here.) 'This Man Reuter' is a very enjoyable film, of the sort they don't make any more, but it has a strong aroma of Hollywood hokum rather than fact. I wish I knew how much of this movie was accurate. Purely for its entertainment value, I'll rate it 7 out of 10.