The most interesting thing about this film is that it was actually made only two years after the "1984" trial of Cardinal Mindszenty, condemning him to life imprisonment after careful preparation by medicinal, psychological, mental and physical brainwash with drugs for weeks. The film makes the effort to get something of the whole picture of this universally outrageous miscarriage of justice, entirely organised by the Russians under Stalin during his worst and last years. It does not entirely succeed, but it manages to get a fair idea by entering subordinate parts, like a Russian officer in love with a Hungarian music school teacher, who is very patriotic, while he has to be loyal to his Russian communist party. The American journalist Tom Kelly plays the most important part, risking his life for getting at the truth of the fall of Hungary under the communists and ends up in hospital for his efforts. The film is very realistic, and although it is painfully reminiscent of a propaganda film, it actually sticks to the truth. There were innumerable propaganda films against Hitler and the nazi empire during the war, and this film is like a continuation of that fierce exposure of the cruelty of dictatorships, but instead of attacking Hitler it now attacks Stalin and quite boldly, showing that bureaucracy from the inside, like "The Iron Curtain" with Dana Andrews two years earlier, which also was a true story. This film does not really penetrate the Soviet procedure of brainwashing, it only hints at its main principles of operation, but it is appalling enough. The film is most memorable for Charles Bickford's entirely convincing and realistic rendering of the personality of Cardinal Mindszenty.