Waving goodbye to the IMDb Message boards,I was kindly pointed to ICM by fellow former-IMDbers,where I found a poll for the best titles of 1940 running. Checking the small amount of credited French films made when the impact of WWII started to be fully felt,I found a wonderful review from dbdumonteil,on a movie which sounds like it captured the oncoming "Threats."The plot:Living in a hotel with people of various nations, Denise keeps a note of when everyone's birthday in the building is. Feeling sorry for him being alone in his room and not welcomed to return to Austria,Denise arranges for a birthday cake to be made for fellow guest Professeur Hoffman. Trying to give all her attention to a romance with British airman Dick Stone,Denise starts to notice fellow guests listening to the radio a lot,and newspaper headlines being focused on the unfolding "European Situation." View on the film:Kept locked away in the darkest corner of the hotel, Erich von Stroheim gives a magnificent performance as Professeur Hoffman. Representing the "war and peace" that France was fighting with,Stroheim brilliantly makes the mask-wearing "monster" Hoffman aware that his Austrian roots will get him labelled as an enemy outcast. Darting round the hotel,the elegant Mireille Balin gives a sparkling performance as Denise,who tries to remain up-beat against the shadow of war going over the hotel.Whilst most film makers understandably attacked the Nazis allegorically,co-writer/(along with Pierre Lestringuez and Curt Alexander) director Edmond T. Gréville goes for a full-force attack,stylishly reflected in tracking shots across mirrors and newspaper clippings capturing the doom gripping the residences from the outbreak of war on the radio. Shooting scenes during the Munich conference of 1938, Gréville rushed the long in production film to cinemas just as France fell to Nazi Occupation in 1940. Furious about the film,the Nazis destroyed the original ending,which led to Gréville having to create a new one in 1943 (which also struggled with lead Balin being in jail for collaborating with the Nazis.)Put together from this "troubled" production history,the screenplay by Alexander/ Lestringuez and Gréville is surprisingly coherent!,with the bubbly romance between Denise and Stone giving the title a sweet playfulness. Retaining the dread from the original print,the writers superbly make the impending Nazi footsteps stench the hotel walls,where Hoffman is left in his cave like apartment,as everyone else sits round the radio to hear the latest threats.

....with a condemned men's stareBut we all cheered wildly (..) As he waved a piece of paper in the air.Elvis Costello ("Peace on our time" )Probably the best of Edmond T Greville's movies ;claiming that the French were not up to scratch -it took a lot a nerve to say that whereas the late thirties were the apex of that cinema- and exiling himself to England ,he made there undistinguished works such as 'Brief ecstasy" or " "Secret lives" when Renoir ,Duvivier and Carné were at the top of their game and easily outdistanced Greville."Menaces" is his come back in every sense of the word.People who see it today may be disconcerted that this 1940 film includes some anachronistic scenes towards the end: the Liberation,and the coming of the Americans .The negative was burned by the Nazis during the occupation ,and reconstructed in 1944 ,adding these optimistic (and sad) final scenes."Menaces" deals with the months before WW2 in a hotel:the fear of the impending war never leaves the guests of an hotel in Paris.The Munich agreement, Poland invasion,Danzig ,and the calling up provide a good background.Erich Von Stroheim is the stand out;wearing a mask which covers the half of his face ,he "represents" peace and war .He has the best lines of the dialog"Now it's time to show my "War side" ,he says,removing his mask.He portrays an Austrian doctor who was wounded in WW1 and he knows that if war breaks out again,he will become the enemy .His character will remind the viewer of his part in "Les Disparus de Saint-Agil" by Christian-Jaque where he played a German teacher,kept in the background by his colleagues .It's extraordinary that almost all of Stroheim's French parts of the thirties and the forties -with few exceptions such as "La Grande Illusion" - were demeaning ones,predating that of "Sunset boulevard" .(see also "La Foire Aux Chimères" and "Portrait D'un Assassin")The other guests of the hotel include Denise (Mireille Balin ,whose best parts were in Duvivier's "Pepe le Moko" and GRemillon's "Gueule d' Amour" where she played opposite Gabin in both) a girl engaged to a British pilot who is loved by a wistful artist who covers the walls of his bedroom with the pictures of his impossible love (he is an artist).In Paris,just before the war,people are worrying,but living and loving.