This was not the best propaganda film from Hollywood during World War II. I would start that list with MRS. MINAFER or SINCE YOU WENT AWAY. Even LIFEBOAT would be ahead of it, despite having the services of Walter Slezak here as well. As is noted in many of the reviews of this thread, ONCE UPON A HONEYMOON is a trifle too schizoid, being a comedy regarding the triangle between Cary Grant and Slezak over Slezak's wife Ginger Rogers, and the issues of Slezak as a "Von Papen" or "Ribbentrop" style diplomat for the Third Reich. Still, it is not as horrendously bad as it's detractors make it sound, and it actually touches (at one of it's best points) a theme that the Allies joked about but really were in no position to discuss until long after the Nuremburg Trials.
Slezak is (as was pointed out in another review) a fellow Austrian to Der Fuhrer, and so one can see him undermining the Schussnigg Regime in Vienna in 1938 (pals of that gauleiter who makes things rough for Captain Von Trapp and his family in THE SOUND OF MUSIC - you can tell the type). Whenever you watch Walter Slezak in his Nazi roles, just like his fellow mittle-European Conrad Veidt, you genuinely see their performing on film the really horrendous creatures that Hitler unleashed on Europe and the globe. Slezak was lucky. He was the son of Leo Slezak, a famous opera/operetta performer, and the Slezak family was able to get out of Europe for the U.S. in the 1930s (just like Veidt and Peter Lorre were able to do). But he captures the career diplomat, serving under Von Ribbentrop's watchful eye - and making contacts throughout the globe to spread Nazi power.
The film has a very heavy framework because of the Nazi threat - which makes the handling of the comic triangle all the more odd to viewers. But that framework has many nice touches in it, mostly due to Leo McCarey's direction. For example, we see Slezak's Baron Von Luber traveling to France - and (after making sure he is not being observed) going towards a house with a sign out front saying "Laval". He goes to Norway and he has a conference with Vidkun Quisling. Towards the end, when he is planning to head for America, one wonders if he was going to visit Henry Ford or Charles Lindbergh (or should I say "Robert Forrest"). There is also a nice introduction at the start showing the face of a huge clock with a swastika in place of the hour and minute arms, and it's called "the clock of Adolf Hitler", with the fall of various countries shown as the swastika turns clockwise.
The interesting thing is that Slezak's character is so committed to the cause of his friends that he does not really care all that much for the embarrassment Roger's affair with Grant causes. In fact he gets Grant to do propaganda for the Nazi cause. This leads to the best scene of the film, wherein Grant is delivering a speech that Slezak wrote over the radio, but that Grant rewrites on the air. In 1942 Americans and their allies really had no idea of the intense inner schisms and power rivalries Hitler pushed among his top echelon of advisers. In a room where Slezak is surrounded by Goering, Goebbels, and Himmler, they hear a radio valentine directed at making Slezak's Baron seem more fitting a successor of Hitler than the other three. We never see the actors playing those three monsters, but we see their backs as they turn at a thoroughly embarrassed and frightened Slezak shrinking before their angry eyes.
The film also is the first time that McCarey and Grant would find an ocean liner as a backdrop (the second would be AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER), but as we discover at the end of this film the ship is as much a weapon and a prop as it is a backdrop.
Slezak is (as was pointed out in another review) a fellow Austrian to Der Fuhrer, and so one can see him undermining the Schussnigg Regime in Vienna in 1938 (pals of that gauleiter who makes things rough for Captain Von Trapp and his family in THE SOUND OF MUSIC - you can tell the type). Whenever you watch Walter Slezak in his Nazi roles, just like his fellow mittle-European Conrad Veidt, you genuinely see their performing on film the really horrendous creatures that Hitler unleashed on Europe and the globe. Slezak was lucky. He was the son of Leo Slezak, a famous opera/operetta performer, and the Slezak family was able to get out of Europe for the U.S. in the 1930s (just like Veidt and Peter Lorre were able to do). But he captures the career diplomat, serving under Von Ribbentrop's watchful eye - and making contacts throughout the globe to spread Nazi power.
The film has a very heavy framework because of the Nazi threat - which makes the handling of the comic triangle all the more odd to viewers. But that framework has many nice touches in it, mostly due to Leo McCarey's direction. For example, we see Slezak's Baron Von Luber traveling to France - and (after making sure he is not being observed) going towards a house with a sign out front saying "Laval". He goes to Norway and he has a conference with Vidkun Quisling. Towards the end, when he is planning to head for America, one wonders if he was going to visit Henry Ford or Charles Lindbergh (or should I say "Robert Forrest"). There is also a nice introduction at the start showing the face of a huge clock with a swastika in place of the hour and minute arms, and it's called "the clock of Adolf Hitler", with the fall of various countries shown as the swastika turns clockwise.
The interesting thing is that Slezak's character is so committed to the cause of his friends that he does not really care all that much for the embarrassment Roger's affair with Grant causes. In fact he gets Grant to do propaganda for the Nazi cause. This leads to the best scene of the film, wherein Grant is delivering a speech that Slezak wrote over the radio, but that Grant rewrites on the air. In 1942 Americans and their allies really had no idea of the intense inner schisms and power rivalries Hitler pushed among his top echelon of advisers. In a room where Slezak is surrounded by Goering, Goebbels, and Himmler, they hear a radio valentine directed at making Slezak's Baron seem more fitting a successor of Hitler than the other three. We never see the actors playing those three monsters, but we see their backs as they turn at a thoroughly embarrassed and frightened Slezak shrinking before their angry eyes.
The film also is the first time that McCarey and Grant would find an ocean liner as a backdrop (the second would be AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER), but as we discover at the end of this film the ship is as much a weapon and a prop as it is a backdrop.