★ 7 / 10
Dana Andrews is one-man newspaper "Race" who is
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Dana Andrews is one-man newspaper "Race" who is transferred to the Paris office where he works for veteran "Nick" (George Sanders) whilst trying to prize his…
Dana Andrews is one-man newspaper "Race" who is transferred to the Paris office where he works for veteran "Nick" (George Sanders) whilst trying to prize his girlfriend "Jeanne" (Märta Torén) away from him. She resists but he persists and she is soon beginning to fall for his charms. Luckily for "Nick" though, a situation develops when an American citizen is sentenced to twenty years in an Hungarian prison for espionage. "Race" is sent to follow up the story and soon finds himself arrested and embroiled in a plot that involves the highest level of the Government and some secret meetings that might well annoy the Soviets. "Nick" and "Jeanne" now have to find a way of obtaining freedom for the writer and getting to the bottom of this conspiracy. This film moves along well with some engaging characterisations from Andrews, Sanders and Torén. It mixes romance and political intrigue with less emphasis on the first aspect and there's some torture and a bit of sarcasm before a denouement that smacked very much of a John Le Carré novel. I enjoyed this.
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★ 6 / 10
post WW II cold war Thrilla
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Assignment Paris is directed by Oscar-awarded Robert Parrish, who had worked with Charlie Chaplin, Hal Roach, and John Ford in the 1920s and 1930s. Looking at…
Assignment Paris is directed by Oscar-awarded Robert Parrish, who had worked with Charlie Chaplin, Hal Roach, and John Ford in the 1920s and 1930s. Looking at his resume, he certainly worked his way up the ladder the old fashioned way. George Sanders plays Nicholas Strang, the wise editor of the paper, for which Jimmy Race (Dana Andrews) works as a digging, scheming reporter. Viewers will recognize Sanders from All About Eve, again playing the older, wiser, mentor. A lot of time is spent with the viewer (but not the characters in the film) watching and hearing what is going on inside the foreign embassies and administration offices, so it's very much a cold war us- against- them story, with Race trying to get to the truth. Caught up in all this is fellow reporter Marta Toren as Jeanne Moray, and no-one is really sure what her story is.... We are led to think she is more involved than we know, but that part of the story seems to have been dropped, or deleted. Also keep an eye out for Leon Askin, who would play General Bulkhalter in Hogan's Heroes ten years later. Quite entertaining, but it almost feels like an episode of Dragnet -- more documentary than story, which could have been the director's intent. Thrilling, if not surprising, conclusion to the movie.
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