State Secret (aka The Great Manhunt, 1950) - Region 2 PAL, plays in English without subtitles

Excellent story about an eminent surgeon tricked into operating on the dictator of the (fictional) state of Vosnia,General Niva,who subsequently dies putting the surgeon in extreme danger.Over 2000 “Vosnian” words were invented ,loosley based on Serbian.Jack Hawkins superb as the Chief of Police.

A rather implausible plot but entertaining all the same. Douglas Fairbanks Junior plays an American surgeon who is invited to the fictional republic of Vosnia to receive an award and is tricked into operating on the country’s dictator who subsequently dies. Desperate to keep the death secret, the chief of police (Jack Hawkins) goes to great lengths to prevent Fairbanks from leaving the country. The rest of the film concerns his increasingly frantic attempts to escape with the reluctant help of showgirl Glynis Johns and wheeler-dealer Herbert Lom.It’s not clear whether Vosnia is a right or left-wing dictatorship, but it actually seems quite a pleasant place to live if you keep your head down, which I’m sure was not the impression that the film-makers intended to create! The film has the added enjoyment for linguists like me in that the characters speak to each other in “Vosnian”, a made-up language which actually seems to have some grammatical construction. They could just as easily have had the actors spout gobbledygook (or got Herbert Lom to teach them something vaguely Eastern European sounding). Even so, Jack Hawkins still sounds like an Englishman wrestling with a pesky foreign tongue.It’s exciting, Richard Hannay “39 Steps” type stuff, with a real sense of what it must be like to be the targets in a thrilling manhunt. The stars acquit themselves well, especially Herbert Lom who is priceless as the smuggler blackmailed into helping with the escape. His relief when he finally gets the escapees off his hands is almost tangible. A good twist at the end too. Really enjoyable.