The actor Robert Donat deserves to be remembered and appreciated today much more than he is. He’s a massively underated actor who is best known for Goodbye Mr Chips the story of dedicated and popular school master and the spy movie The 39 Steps. Donat who died in the late 1950’s was a British matinee idol, good looking with a powerful screen persona. He was the undisputed top romantic leading man in British cinema of the 1930’s. He was a great actor and tonight’s movie showcases both his ability to play the action hero and play the romantic lead.

The Adventures of Tartu is about a British bomb disposal expert called Terrence Stevenson, played by Robert Donat, who the storyline tells us originally hails from Romania but who moved to the UK as a child. Because of his background in chemical engineering and the fact that he can speak fluent German and Romanian, he is picked by the War Office to undertake a dangerous mission in Nazi occupied Eastern Europe. He is told that he is to find and destroy a German poison gas plant before the product can be used on Allied troops.

The War Office transforms Stevenson into a member of the pro-Nazi ‘Iron Guard’ called Jan Tartu and sends him off to Czechoslovakia where he has to pass himself off as a Nazi officer in order to find where the hidden chemical plant is. This film, made in 1943 is an excellent spy drama with a romantic element and lots of intreige about whether the Resistance should trust Tartu or not.

I was only vaguely aware of this movie until recently and I’m very glad that I discovered it and I hope you enjoy it too.