State Secret

Launder (co-producer) and Gilliat (writer/co-producer/director) drew on the lessons they'd learned when working for Hitchcock in the '30s to turn out this nifty little thriller (from a novel by Roy Huggins) with a welcome sprinkling of humour. Fairbanks is the American surgeon called into the authoritarian Mittel-European state of Vosnia to receive honours from the country's medical fraternity, but he's embroiled in the local political turmoil when asked to operate on the ailing military premier, becoming one of the privileged few who know the secret of the general's fading health.