Cloak and Dagger is an espionage war film, made just after WW2 but with the same fervor that Lang applied to his earlier Hangmen Also Die! American films in general downplayed war themes for the first couple of years after the victory, but Lang kept up the fight, twisting it against an even more pressing threat than Nazi terror. The plot is about the pre- C.I.A. spy organization, O.S.S., trying to stall the Nazi nuclear research program, but the script stops more than once for bald pacifist lectures. Unlikely scientist / man of adventure Cooper says things like the following:

Cooper succinctly says that Atomic power is beyond human ability to control, and its spread has to be stopped. He's speaking of the Nazis, but the message is clearly anti-nuke. This, right in 1946, makes Lang's Cloak and Dagger one of the first movies to buck Official Policy, which was already spreading ideas that the Atom would be a clean source of safe energy, and that America needed to build bigger and better bombs. Lardner and Maltz'es speeches also plainly state that nuclear science isn't some 'secret' held by America alone, that somebody else would have to steal in order to build a bomb. Technical solutions could be stolen, yes, but not the secret itself. Government propaganda would soon use the leakage of Atom secrets to weave tales of Communist spies making off with our patented Golden Fleece. "We can explode the atoms in one apple and destroy a city," says Cooper, "But for all our science, we can't make one apple." The pacifistic & anti-nuke ideas were obviously what appealed to Lang, but he filmed Cloak and Dagger not knowing that his full message wouldn't make it to the screen.

Fritz Lang literally invented the modern spy movie. From Spione to The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse, he introduced every kind of doublecross and technological spy gimmick, before the advent of James Bond. His spies of the twenties resemble modern comic book supercriminals, a curious mixture of chivalry and ruthlessness in elaborate theatrical disguises. In WW2, the hero of Lang's Ministry of Fear had to fight a paranoid world of double agents and shifted values. With its Brave New Nukes theme, Lang's Cloak and Dagger was again ahead of everyone else.

Cloak and Dagger is a straight, humorless spy story with some good episodes. Novice operative Cooper fools an American double-agent in Switzerland, but fails in his main purpose, and a good woman dies. He does better in Italy, but still comes out with only middling success - a team of agents is destroyed. Unlike the best Lang pictures, the pacing is off. The story begins with lots of talk, and when Cooper and Gina are hiding out alone in Italy, it stays confined to a few sets, losing the feeling of context, like a stagebound television show.

Cooper's character is also a stretch. Without any training, he transforms from an academic into Indiana Jones. It's obvious that you don't send a potential member of the brain trust on such an unlikely mission, but off he goes. Coop passes for German in Switzerland, but never finds a character - he cooly blackmails a seasoned spy, and then turns into a real softie for the remarkable Lilli Palmer. Just when we're keen on the mission, the film leaves the rescue of a scientist's daughter to happen off-screen, and we instead watch the blooming of a new romance.

Unfortunately, we don't get much of a feel for Cooper and Palmer's plight, only seeing them hiding in a few rooms, a carnival storehouse, and under a bridge. Because they're just waiting for the plot to re-commence, the film stalls, even though Lilli Palmer is given lots of charming business to perform. In a touching scene, she dresses up to re-create the 'pre-war Gina' for Cooper's approval.

The acting and performances are variable. Robert Alda, Dan Seymour and others make a colorless bunch of partisans, yakking away in English and never appearing to be Italian. Veteran Vladimir Sokoloff (For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Magnificent Seven) also walks through his part. Much more interesting are the small bits without much screen time. Helen Thimig is the sickly scientist Cooper tries to free in Switzerland, who unfortunately has only one scene.

When Lang does things right, the picture sings. The compromising of an enemy agent is shown in a deft series of shots. There's a good, messy fight in the failed rescue attempt. Cooper's fortunes always seem to be guided by little mistakes, as when Palmer allows sympathy for a housecat to interfere with their mission. Encountering a snoop photographer at an airport (just like James Bond in Jamaica in Dr. No), Cooper avoids having his picture taken, immediately attracting the interest of Gestapo agents.

The best scene in the film is a terrfic fight, kind of a precursor to Hitchcock's sloppy farmhouse murder in Torn Curtain. Cooper and Palmer can't pick up their scientist on the street, because a known agent, Luigi (a truly slimy Marc Lawrence) is watching. Palmer distracts Luigi by straightening her stocking, and Cooper muscles him into a doorway, for a masterful fight scene. It's no-nonsense dirty fighting. Lawrence gouges Cooper's eyes while they struggle for a knife and a gun. Cooper pries Lawrence's fingers apart in an extremely painful-looking shot, and gives him a couple of murderous-looking chops to the throat. All this happens to the sweet tune of an Italian organ-grinder outside in the street. It's serious stuff, and it gets applause, even now. To top it off, the scene ends with a visual reference to Lang's M, in the form of a bouncing ball symbolizing death.

The movie now ends with Cooper and Sokoloff's scientist flying away to America, while Gina stays behind to fight. A lot of it is clearly a re-shoot, with a lengthy farewell speech exchanged between them just at the time when the takeoff should be hurried. A cut to the airplanes propellers starting mimics Casablanca, and Max Steiner's music rises to a patriotic climax. It's a very unmemorable finish that feels like a wartime morale booster, three years out of date.

What was cut - or censored by government influence, as Savant believes - is the following: