Michael Morrison Acting and writing are as close to perfect as anyone can expect from a movie.None of the actors are household names today, but each and every one is about as perfect in his role as one could expect, even from those magnificent British players.Writers created a nearly perfect script, with tension and sympathy, with drama and excitement. Villains are quite definitely villains -- but not from their viewpoint. They are working for peace and democracy. They recruit new members among those seeking "a world without war" and "a government run by the people."Surely they are communists, and in reality -- as opposed to what they tell their potential recruits and followers -- are agents of a foreign power, in this case the Soviet Union, but never are they labeled as such.So a viewer can watch and enjoy without political considerations, with, instead, concern about the intended villainy, worry for the possible innocent victims; one need not think about labels, such as "communist" or "Soviet agent," but ponder instead the fact that collectivist and statist ideologies brush off the fact that violence and initiated force always have victims, however lofty the proclaimed ideals.One of the policemen tells a leader of the saboteurs, "But surely history, and recent history also shows us ... that wherever people have known the light, they don't tolerate the darkness for very long." Ah, would that that were true.Even right here in these United States, ignorant or stupid or, yes, villainous people are praising and supporting the darkness. Witness the popularity of Che T-shirts, of riots on college campuses to prevent other opinions from being heard, of street demonstrations created for the purpose of violence -- and if the results are not darkness, and intended to bring darkness, then darkness has not ever been the goal of political violence.This movie, "High Treason," was produced before most of the people around now to see it were even born, even before I was born. Yet it is still relevant, as warning of what can happen now, and as a history lesson of what actually did happen."High Treason" is an excellent motion picture, one I had never heard of before accidentally finding a very good print at YouTube. I highly recommend it. In fact, I urge you to see it.

Robert J. Maxwell There's a moment that seems to sum up the emotional tonus of this story of Commie espionage in London. Anthony Bushell has been sent undercover by Scotland Yard to investigate some avant-garde musical society that seems somehow connected to a terrible explosion at the docks.When the chief Scotland Yard investigator, Redmond, initially asks Bushell if he has any interest in music, Bushell replies dead-pan, "Why, do you need help moving a piano?" Bushell, undercover, attends a meeting of the society after joining it, and he sits in the audience, arms folded, while the speaker introduces a piece for a string trio that was the composer's "first effort -- and also his last." Yes, the music they play is very dramatic, the speaker tells us, but underneath there is lyricism and "some jolly good tunes." On stage, the trio launch into a lugubrious cascade of clashing chords that might sound appropriate if you were watching some kind of pop version of Dracula while on mushrooms. It dissolves your basilar membranes. It fuses your middle ear. The two violins moan and the cellist is going ape, throwing his hair wildly around. Well, Bushell has a face that's about as interesting as a hard-boiled egg, but his features twist into first horror, then disbelief as the flood of dissonance flows on and he rest of the audience sits rapt. I found the scene hilarious, and it didn't strike me as an imitation of Hitchcock in any way.The whole movie is like that. The events are serious indeed -- Soviet agents at work blowing up London -- but the dialog is quick and witty and layered over with a kind of strictly British humor -- or I should say "humour" -- that's hard to define. When the inspectors unexpectedly discover a murdered spy, one of them glances at it and says, "Hello." You never find this sort of stuff on "Law and Order" but you can find good examples in films like "Mona Lisa." And, though there are wisecracks in abundance in most American cop movies, they sound hyperbolic and slightly coarse.I'm skipping over the plot because, like most espionage and spy thrillers, it's pretty complicated. Men in overcoats following suspicious women in heels across city streets. Basically, it's a story of Redmond, Morrell, Bushell, and the rest incrementally pinning down the Red Menace, who might as well be gangsters as far as the dynamics are concerned. Some of the heavies are rough guys, some are pathetic sissies, a clerk in a bowler looks like T. S. Eliot, and the one at the top is suavely evil -- not much originality there. It's a serious movie. The Reds are all bastards. They kill one another without remorse if it moves the cause one step forward.The performances are all fine, except when the actors are hobbled by stereotypical roles. There's nothing special about the direction but the climactic confrontation is agreeably noirish -- all those wet cobblestone streets glistening under the lamps -- and the shoot out is well staged and exciting.

Michael Neumann An otherwise workmanlike British thriller with familiar overtones of anti-Communist paranoia is salvaged by a lively script that underplays the bellicose propagandizing of other, similar witch-hunts. The emphasis instead is on action and character and some colorful local dialogue, as a network of saboteurs infiltrates the highest (and lowest) levels of democracy with nefarious plots to undermine England's power structure. The enemy agents are never precisely identified (it's clear who they are long before the authorities catch them 'Red' handed), and of course they're no match for the stiff upper lips of Scotland Yard, although it takes an extended gun battle at the Battersea power station to prove it. The film was less flattering and thus less popular than its predecessor, 'Seven Days to Noon', but seen today it remains an enjoyable, well-crafted relic from the warmer days of the Cold War.

Benoit Vanhees The previous comment on this indeed very fine and intense movie has to be rectified in at least one important aspect: fortunately enough it DOES exist on VHS, more particularly in the series "British Classics Collection". For one or another strange reason though, the manufacturer of this video labeled it as "Crime", while it rather is a "Political action thriller" (even if we don't get much ideological explanations about the motives of the saboteurs.)After blowing up a ship at London Docks, a group of (communist) saboteurs decide to hit a far more important target, the Battersea Power Station.(For those not acquainted with this tall building which provided grateful Londoners with electricity during the Blitz, it is that somewhat sinister looking power plant used on the cover of Pink Floyd's "Animals" LP from 1977. The band's promotion stunt of attaching a gigantic pig-shaped balloon to one of the chimneys became a quite famous one)The idea behind the raid against Battersea is of course to destabilize temporarily the City, by provoking a large scale power cut. Scotland Yard in the meantime has found evidence on board of the SS Asia Star which clearly indicates that the explosion was not an unfortunate accident, but a deliberate act of sabotage. Bit by bit, Special Branch manages to close in on the saboteurs. In a very fascinating and intense finale, a large scale battle between the cops and the saboteurs takes place inside the "heart" of Battersea. It's really a fine action movie with a staccato rhythm, taking place in and around the superb location of an almost mythical building, that somehow managed to survive several attacks by Heinkel and Dornier bombers. Ben Vanhees Berchem Antwerp Belgium