Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

brendangcarroll I saw this again the other night after many years and was impressed at how entertaining it was. It moves at a cracking pace (so typical of Warner Bros style) and has a great cast of fine character actors (especially Albert Bassermann, Nigel Bruce and Otto Kruger) supporting Edward G Robinson in the title role, who gives a nicely understated performance.The telescoping of events and the dramatic license with facts are to be expected in a film from this period, and in the main, the film presents a stirring account of how the transmission of news grew in the 19th century. Some reviewers here criticise Warners for not mentioning Reuter's conversion from Judaism to Christianity but anyone thinking a Hollywood studio would tackle such a complex subject in 1940 is expecting far too much. The direction by Dieterle is first rate and the pace is brisk, with the hand of Hal Wallis very obvious in the snappy editing and excision of any superfluous material.Much was made on the historical accuracy of the sets such as the London Stock exchange) and certainly, the recreation of the House of Commons in London while smaller than the real thing, looked very convincing.There is much else to enjoy here if you are a movie buff of Warner films from this period. When Reuter & Max are walking through the city near the beginning, we see many of the famous standing sets on the Warner back-lot at the time, including :- the Casa di Bonnyfeather and canal at Leghorn (built for Anthony Adverse): the large church structure built circa 1930, with the pillars & big flight of steps that featured in so many films including The Roaring 20s (Cagney dies on those steps at the end) and Deception (Bette Davis runs up those steps at the beginning) and we even see the large Nottingham Castle Gate with portcullis built for The Adventures of Robin Hood in 1937. Some of these sets were still standing as late as 1975! Above all, there is Max Steiner's terrific score. This tale clearly resonated in him and he produces one of his most arresting and dramatic works, with a superbly heraldic Main Title which reappears throughout at key points of the story, and also Steiner's most gorgeous waltz (for Reuter's wife played by the lovely and underrated Edna Best) that betrays his Viennese background. Steiner's score for REUTER cries out for a modern recording, yet few ever mention it when discussing his work for films.I think it is one of his finest, the equal to Now Voyager, All This & Heaven Too and Big Sleep. If the film were shown more, maybe it would be noticed by the CD companies.So, while this may not be the greatest of the Warner bio-pics, it is certainly unjustly overlooked. Let us hope it reaches DVD soon.

Michael_Elliott Dispatch from Reuter's, A (1940) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Minor bio-pic from Warner features Edward G. Robinson as Paul Julius Reuter, the man who started off with pigeons and then building Europe's fastest news wire service. The late 30's and early 40's were full of biography movies and this one here is somewhat entertaining but there's just not enough here to make it really worth seeing. I know a few things about Reuter's life that wasn't included in this film and I can only guess that the subject wouldn't have interested folks in 1940. With that said, I'm really not sure what Jack Warner himself would have found so interesting about the story actually filmed. The main story has Reuter trying to stay ahead of other people and a big finale about his report on the Lincoln assassination and whether or not it's true. There really never is any drama that builds from any of the situations, although I will admit the stuff with the pigeons was pretty good. The film covers a wide range of years but the time itself never seems to move in the film. Not for a second did I believe I was watching something taking place in the 1820's and this really takes away from the atmosphere that should have been created. Robinson turns in a fairly good performance but I did expect more from him. He fits the role quite well but not once did I feel too much passion coming from him. Edna Best serves as the wife but doesn't really add too much. Eddie Albert does the best work of the cast with Gene Lockhart, Otto Kruger, James Stephenson and Nigel Bruce rounding out the supporting players. Child star Dickie Moore has a brief part in the film. I'm sure a good movie might be made with this story but sadly it's not this one.

F Gwynplaine MacIntyre I briefly worked for the Reuters news agency (in a very minor capacity) during the Cold War, so I was curious to see the film 'This Man Reuter', which purports to be a biopic of Paul Julius Reuter. I knew almost nothing about the agency's founder before I saw this film ... and now that I've seen it, I still know almost nothing about him. How much of this movie is true? I get the impression that very little of it is.The good news first: this is an extremely well-made Warner Brothers 'prestige' picture, expertly directed by the great William Dieterle and splendidly photographed by the legendary James Wong Howe. There are some fine montage sequences (by Don Siegel?), easily up to this studio's standard. (Warners always had the best montages.) There's a good supporting cast, and Edward G Robinson gives conviction and humanity to the leading role. I was even pleased to see a brief appearance by former silent-film comedian George Ovey.The bad news: in spite of all of the above, I still find myself wondering how much of this actually happened. We see Reuter (Robinson) in the mid-19th century, as a man obsessed with acquiring information and disseminating it as rapidly as possible. He begins by using a telegraph and carrier pigeons to collect the stock-market quotations, selling the information to a cartel of brokers. (Ovey appears during this pigeon sequence.) There's an amusing scene with Gene Lockhart as a broker who schemes to get one jump ahead of his rivals, and who is promptly outsmarted by Robinson. Lockhart was one of those character actors whom audiences liked to see humiliated and outsmarted. (Another such was Walter Catlett.) Lockhart is in good form here, but I suspect that he's portraying a fictional character.Another fictional character here, surely, is the hero's buddy Max, portrayed by Eddie Albert. I've always liked Albert and regretted that he never really clicked in films: he was typecast as the hero's earnest pal, and hardly got a chance to transcend that niche: he certainly doesn't transcend it here. I suspect that Jack Warner inserted the handsome Albert into this film as an attraction for female movie-goers who mightn't want to look at Edward G Robinson.SPOILERS COMING NOW. Inevitably, Reuter's empire prospers ... and here comes a climax which I well and truly suspect is Hollywood fiction. It's now April 1865, and there's still no transatlantic telegraph cable to replace the one that broke in 1858. With the Civil War raging in the U.S.A., Reuter has a rival in London who's receiving transatlantic despatches faster than Reuter can get them. Reuter comes up with a Heath Robinson system to shave a few minutes off his rival's time, by dropping messages overboard as ships reach the Irish coast, trusting them to wash ashore and be retrieved, then cabling the gen to London. Will Reuter's method work?Astoundingly, the very FIRST message that Reuter receives by this method is the assassination of Lincoln. (Which we see in one of the montages.) Is this true? Was the news of Lincoln's assassination indeed Reuter's first transatlantic despatch ... or merely his first major scoop? (Another big scoop -- the end of America's Civil War -- occurred only a few days before Lincoln's assassination, yet we get no mention of that here.) 'This Man Reuter' is a very enjoyable film, of the sort they don't make any more, but it has a strong aroma of Hollywood hokum rather than fact. I wish I knew how much of this movie was accurate. Purely for its entertainment value, I'll rate it 7 out of 10.

Sleepy-17 Just like the other reviewer stated, this one has it all, great acting, great script, great music and direction. It has all the elements of the Warner Brothers films that I grew familiar with when I was a grammar school student, watching the Early Show on TV. I learned about literature, biography, acting, photography styles, music (Korngold, Steiner,Waxman), directing (Curtiz, Dieterle), and a warped view of history (They Died With Their Boots On), all at the same time. This one rests on the great humanity of Edward G. Robinson's acting ability. ****Possible Spoiler***** Watch for the pigeons bearing proposals of marriage! Sheer hokum, but very watchable, and yes, moving. I had never seen this one before; when I was young I would skip movies like this to watch ones promising more violence. But it brought back all those Warner Brothers emotions of warmth and idealism.