The Counterfeit Traitor

In 1942, a Swedish oil trader of American origin named Eric Erickson keeps doing business with Nazi Germany, which leads those around him to treat him as a collaborator and to cut him off. Approached by a British agent, Collins, he agrees to work for the Allies as a spy. His trading trips give him cover to travel into Germany and inspect the oil refineries and industrial sites that feed the German war effort, while he gathers intelligence and sends it back. The strain of the double life costs him friendships and puts him in constant danger. In Germany he meets Marianne Möllendorf, a woman who is also working against the regime, and the two grow close.

George Seaton directed and wrote the screenplay, and produced with William Perlberg. It is the second of the three films he directed, following Miracle on 34th Street in 1947 and preceding Airport in 1970. William Holden plays Erickson, Lilli Palmer plays Marianne, and Hugh Griffith appears as Collins, with Carl Raddatz, Ernst Schröder and Charles Regnier among a credited cast of 39.

The film runs 140 minutes. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.4/10 from around 3,500 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.4/10 from a much smaller number of votes, so the audience scores rest on very different sample sizes and are not directly comparable.